


Killer Plants from Outer Space!

by cowboyjimkirk



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Body Horror, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hanahaki Disease, Hurt Jim, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Pining, Post-Star Trek: Into Darkness, THIS ISN'T AS DEPRESSING AS IT SOUNDS I PROMISE, Tarsus IV, he's doing his best ok?, it's just a nice halloween romp, repressed spock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-29
Updated: 2020-11-28
Packaged: 2021-03-08 03:14:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 52,273
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26908723
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cowboyjimkirk/pseuds/cowboyjimkirk
Summary: Jim's five the first time he coughs up a flower. Years later, he'll think that it was a long time coming.For those who aren't aware (because I'm not sure how common the Hanahaki trope is): Hanahaki is a fictional disease that entails flowers blooming in a character's stomach and/or lungs as the result of unrequited love. Typically, the character either finds love that is requited or succumbs to the disease and DIES.This is Hanahaki with a twist.
Relationships: James T. Kirk/Spock
Comments: 78
Kudos: 427





	1. Part One

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been in a mad dash to finish this by Halloween and, well, I did finish the first draft. So the rest should be coming soon, though I've admittedly given up on my October 31st aspirations; there's just too much editing still to be done. 
> 
> I hope you enjoy! I included more detailed (and spoilery) warnings for this chapter in the end notes!

Jim’s five the first time he coughs up a flower. Years later, he’ll think that it was a long time coming. 

He likes to help his mother garden. It’s a big task for a five-year-old; his hands are still a little too small and he gets dirty without even trying and the plants often grow taller than he is. he’s still too small to help run the farm—too small, really, to garden—but he likes coming home covered in dirt and mumbling about a day’s hard work as he looks up at his mom’s broad arms and the smile playing across her lips.

Riverside is a nostalgic town, and sometimes neighbors pass in old-fashioned cars and even the occasional wagon. The grandparents smile at Jim and Sam and bring them cookies—homemade and not the replicated kind that mom gives them. Sometimes, as the boys rush off to the creek to hide their prize, Jim will hear them mutter about “God’s country.”

When Jim asks his mom what that means one night before bed, she just rolls her eyes.

“It’s too nostalgic and too Christian for my taste,” she says.

Jim’s not sure what that means either, but she doesn’t say anything else. He asks Sam about it, and his brother says it’s because Winona hates farming. She runs the entire place by herself, only with the help of Sam and the occasional hired hand, and she hates it about as much as anyone can hate anything.

“That’s silly,” Jim says because it is silly. it’s silly that she would get up early and stay out late, that she would never be there for dinner and Sam had to make it, that she wouldn’t even tuck them into bed, and all to do something that she doesn’t even like. 

And later, when Jim learns that his mom is sitting on a small fortune—dad’s pension, Sam tells him; Starfleet’s apology for that empty chair at the table—he thinks it’s even sillier.

Sometimes Jim sits in that chair, the red one at the head of the table, and waits for his mom to come home. She’ll come stomping in late at night, and when she glances at Jim, there’s no fondness there, no love. Only a grim resolve and a blankness that makes Jim wonder if he’s done something wrong.

She avoids the neighbors, too. The grandparents with the home baked cookies, the adults who want to talk about the weather and taxes and politics, and the children Jim never gets to play with—none of them get invited ‘round, not even for birthdays or Hanukkah. 

That’s the real reason Jim starts to garden. It’s just a plot of dirt behind the house—too small to be a real, adult garden, but just the right size for Jim—and he thinks maybe he can make it pretty. Maybe he can fill it with flowers and vegetables and his mom will be happy.

He orders the seeds himself and does all the research. Pumpkins grow best in a compost mixture and should be planted in tiny hills; he should water them well but make sure not to get the leaves wet or a fungus might grow. Sunflowers are easy to grow, but he has to build a fence if he wants to plant the giant ones or they’ll blow over.

Winona doesn’t ask why he’s building a fence, only helps him with the wire cutters, and Jim thinks that’s for the best. Sunflowers are her favorite, he knows, and he wants them to be a surprise. 

The first crop dies when a tornado comes to visit. Jim spends his time stuck inside researching the genetic modification of crops, and he starts to daydream about Jack and the Beanstalk and sunflowers that reach so high Jim can visit his dad and meet aliens.

Maybe it’ll grow all the way to Vulcan and Jim can explore the stars just like his mom.

It’s after the second crop dies—another tornado and quite odd for this time of year, the neighbors say—that Sam starts to tell stories to help pass the time. Scary stories and funny stories and some that don’t make any sense, but there’s only one that Jim will still remember years later when his family’s scattered and the land’s barren and the house talks at night about all the things it’s seen.

Sam calls him Andrew Leighton at first, and there’s something to be said for verisimilitude because Jim can practically see the wheels turning in Sam’s head as he spins his story but he still believes every word of it.

Andrew Leighton kept a farm there a long, long time ago. It was small and modest, but it was enough for Andrew and his parents and he was proud of it. 

One day he went into town to conduct business and that’s when he met someone. “Someone” varies with Sam’s retellings, but every time without fail they retired to an inn and became lovers. Andrew left the next day, but with the promise to write. They maintain their correspondence and their affection for each other grows, but it can never extend beyond their letters.

It is a forbidden love, Sam says, and he never explains why, but Jim thinks it must be because of their parents. He may only be five, but he knows how these stories usually go.

Andrew and his lover agree to meet on the edge of the corn fields by the copse of trees. Sam gestures toward the weeping willows that stand over the creek, the ones that he and Jim sometimes climb when feeling especially daring. 

The lovers were meant to leave that night and start a new homestead, one far away from disapproving eyes. Andrew arrives at the designated time with a sunflower in hand (Jim thinks Sam only says it’s a sunflower to make him feel better about his failing garden, but he never questions him on it). And he waits by the largest of the willow trees, the one that is gnarled and twisted and still looks much the same now as it did way back then. 

The moon comes out and casts his shadow long upon the ground, but still he waits. The sunflower wilts in the cold night air and there are things that snap behind him and above him and make him scared, but still he waits.

He is nearly asleep when footsteps sound behind him. Smiling, Andrew turns to meet his lover, but he is met with an ax instead.

The details of Andrew Leighton’s story change with retellings. Sometimes he and his lover stay at a tavern and sometimes at the historic Motel 8. Sometimes it’s his lover who holds the ax and other times it’s an angry parent. Often, Andrew’s dead before he can even turn to see his murderer.

But one detail remains the same: even as Andrew’s head tumbles to the ground, his body still stands and his hand still holds the flower. His killer takes the ax to the willow tree and hides his body there, like they sometimes did to witches.

The head is also hidden in the tree, thrown in without a care. But—and Sam is very insistent on this, maybe because it’s the goriest part of the entire story—by dawn, his head has moved to the top of the tree, impaled upon a branch.

And the willow groaned with its new weight and drank Andrew’s blood from the soil.

Sam, after several retellings, forgets Andrew Leighton’s name and starts calling him the Reaping Man. Jim is smart and pretty sure he knows what “reaping” means, but he is only five after all and his brain and mouth don’t always work in unison, and so he becomes the Weeping Man. 

It is the Weeping Man who comes awake at night, crawling through and over the trees. His limbs have become long, some of his bones replaced by branches and tools. Jim sometimes imagines that he found his own skull and twisted back onto his body. Sometimes he imagines an animal skull, a dog head with long canines supported by too many vertebrae. But, no matter the form, he knows—and he knows this because Sam told him—that the Weeping Man always searches for new bones and new organs. That he will find Jim and pull his lungs out and leave flowers there instead.

Jim’s relieved when the tornadoes go, because it means more gardening and fewer scary stories. Oddly, though, it also means Frank.

Frank, who arrives when the storms stop and who is the only one Winona ever invites to the farmhouse.

Jim is delighted at first, glad to have someone there when he wakes up and a booming laugh that fills the empty spaces. Sam, however, bristles at his presence, yells when he finds him sitting in the red chair. It unsettles Jim to see his brother so upset, especially when he doesn’t understand the reason for it.

No one is surprised when Winona leaves. It’s not long after Frank arrives and just a few weeks before Jim’s sunflowers finally start to bloom. 

Frank acts it, acts like this has come out the wide, blue sky and hit him on the head, but they all knew it was only a matter of time. She was always sky bound, had described herself as such, had said sometimes on the rare nights that she tucked Jim and Sam into bed that she wanted to look up, not down. Forward and not backward, and Jim had finally understood why she hated farming: it was Earth and nostalgia wrapped up into one. It was her dead husband and the children that her body had grown but that she didn’t want. It was getting up early and staying out late just so she didn’t have to look her son in the eye.

Jim keeps growing his sunflowers, but everything else changes.

Frank’s laughter is replaced by shouts and the sound of fists meeting flesh. Sam begins to tell the story of the Weeping Man almost nightly, whisper-breaths filling Jim’s ears with monsters not quite as scary as the one that lives in their house. And Jim, very quietly and in the middle of the night, starts to cough up sunflower petals.

At first , Jim thinks that it must be because of the Weeping Man. He lays awake at night waiting for Andrew Leighton to come, wondering if he’s done something wrong, if he’s been bad and this is the result. And when he doesn’t come, Jim wonders if he’s already dead. Maybe he’s just like the Weeping Man and he died a long time ago and his body hasn’t quite realized it yet and just keeps moving around.

So he flushes the petals down the toilet and tells no one. Not even when the petals turn to blossoms and he finds dirt and roots in his throat and he nearly chokes to death. Years pass by, and still he tells no one.

Jim is surprised when Sam leaves. It happens on a hot autumn day after a week of rain, and the sun hurts Jim’s eyes as he looks up at his brother.

“You’re gonna be OK, you always are. Always doing everything right, good grades, obeying every stupid order,” Sam spits as he stalks down the driveway, but Jim barely hears the words. “I can’t be a Kirk in this house. Show me how to do that and I’ll stay.”

Sam’s turned to him now, but Jim doesn’t have an answer, doesn’t even understand the question. The sun’s still in his eyes, his brother’s face cast in shadow, and Jim can do nothing but wish he had words to make him stay and look down at the dusty road.

“See ya,” Sam says as he walks away.

It’s not long after that—after Jim realizes that being good won’t bring his mother home, won’t stop the flowers in his throat, and so maybe he should try being spectacularly, recklessly bad—that he coughs up something new. He’s grateful it didn’t happen in the Corvette or at the police station and that his body waited until Frank had said his piece and Jim was shivering and bleeding behind the barn.

He thinks he’s choking at first, that maybe Frank knocked something loose and he swallowed a bone. But then there are blue petals coming out and Jim recognizes them because they belong to the bluebells that grow by the creek. The ones that Sam likes to braid into the horses’ manes—Jackie especially because she’s Sam’s favorite and Jim always gets a runny nose if he spends too much time near them.

The flowers fall to the earth but his throat keeps constricting and now it feels like someone’s throttling him. Frank come back to finish his job or the Weeping Man come to finally start his. Jim starts to dry heave, his body protesting the presence of something already expelled. It’s an allergic reaction, he realizes, just in time for his vision to tunnel and the world to go dark.

The next time he wakes it’s morning and he’s still lying in the dirt with red blood and blue flowers next to him.

Jim doesn’t think much about the Weeping Man after that. He doesn’t think much about Sam either, because he’s smart enough to recognize correlation if not causation, and he knows he can’t survive another attack like that.

Instead, he thinks about trouble. Trouble and how much of it he can get into.

❀

The answer, it turns out, is quite a lot.

The tipping point isn’t Corvette number one or even Corvette number two. It’s not the bad grades or his disciplinary record at school or the time he hacks into Starfleet’s student database and enrolls Millie Schreiner’s dog simply because she asked him to.

Frank’s pretty PO’ed when Starfleet comes knocking, and it doesn’t exactly help that Jim takes the visiting lieutenant’s hovercar for a joyride, but even that’s not what finally does it.

No, it’s the time he punches Frank back. Then his ass is on the floor, out the door, and on a shuttle before he even has time to say “Fuck you too, bastard.”

Jim’s thirteen when he arrives on Tarsus IV. At least he’s finally getting to see the stars, he supposes.

His aunt and uncle are kind and hardworking and Jim’s reasonable enough that he doesn’t cause too much trouble. Tormenting them wouldn’t be much fun and anyways. 

But he doesn’t get too attached either. This is a farming colony after all and Uncle Larry especially is passionate about gardening. First thing he does when Jim arrives is show him the Cardassian Dahlias he keeps by the back window, talking for hours about their upkeep and a myth that they bleed red when cut by someone with cruel intentions. Jim rues the day he starts coughing those things up.

Still, months pass and they pass easily. Aunt Marie gives Jim his own plot in the garden, far larger than the one in Iowa, and he keeps himself busy tending it. He sticks to vegetables this time and only at night does he sometimes think about his sunflowers, a million lightyears away and surely dead. 

Uncle Larry shows him a trick for growing giant vegetables—”Sawdust in the dirt,” he says with a wink of his eye and a touch of his nose, “but don’t tell anyone”—and Jim enters his pumpkin into the giant fruit and vegetable contest at the county fair.

 _Winona would’ve hated it here_ , he thinks as he watches grandmas exchange knitting patterns and Uncle Larry boast about crop yields. Children run past, nearly knocking Jim’s pumpkin over, and he’ll swear until his dying day that he hears one of them shout “Gee willikers!” _This place is more like Old Earth than even Earth was._

Thoughts of Winona often lead to a quick trip to the bathroom, and Jim excuses himself in between the ribbon ceremonies. He lets out a sigh of relief when only a few petals come up; it’s been months since a full flower came out of him, and he hopes it stays that way.

It’s at the fair, right after Jim’s pumpkin wins first place and he’s pinned the blue ribbon to his shirt and is grinning from ear to ear, that he first hears about the fungus. It’s just a grumble at first, one of the neighbors complaining about an unfamiliar specimen that’s invaded part of his crop. He’s sure he’ll find a way to contain it.

Weeks pass and Jim thinks it’s almost funny that an entire colony of botanists can be stumped by one little mold. Even Uncle Larry starts to run out of theories and teaches Jim how to jar their fruits and vegetables. 

There’s a whisper in the autumn air and a tension that grows as the days become shorter.

The fungus takes Jim’s garden almost overnight. He gets up early that day, awoken by shouting in the distance. The neighbors have started arguing and Aunt Marie doesn’t invite them over anymore. Jim thinks it’s because she doesn’t want him to hear about Governor Kodos’ proposed rationing.

He eats breakfast—oatmeal and his aunt’s jarred peregrine fruit; not very filling, but it’ll have to do—and steps outside to check on his vegetables.

For a moment, Jim thinks the frost must have come early. The world is silent, like after a snowfall or right before a storm, and everything’s white—the tomatoes, the squash, even his pumpkins. Jim hadn’t planted flowers, hadn’t wanted to, but he looks at Uncle Larry’s bleeding hearts and can see them droop under the weight of something that looks like spider silk, their scarlet petals scattered on the ground.

Jim’s surprised to realize he’s fallen to his knees.

“Jim!” his aunt shouts from the doorway and Jim spins around, heart thudding. “Come inside! They’re saying—well, they’re saying they don’t know how it spreads.”

Jim nods and runs to her, wraps his arms around her waist and buries his face in her dress. 

“I’m sorry,” he says, though he doesn’t know what he’s sorry for. She lets him stay there, running her fingers through his hair as he cries.

It travels through the air. No one knows for sure what it does to the human lung. Uncle Larry announces this when he gets home later that day, and he exchanges a look with Aunt Marie over dinner when he thinks Jim’s not looking.

The Cardassian dahlias turn white the next day and Jim helps throw all the houseplants out. People start wearing gas masks—the old-fashioned kind, mostly, with the big glass eyes and filter cartridges for noses. Tarsus is a colony full of nostalgists and antique collectors and Starfleet still isn’t responding to their signals.

There’s still an entire shelf of jarred fruit left when the news arrives. Everyone is to make their way to city hall where Governor Kodos will outline his relief plan. Attendance is mandatory; they will, after all, all have to work together if they wish to survive these difficult times.

Jim can’t find his mask the morning of the meeting, so he tells his aunt and uncle to head off without him. It’s funny because he knows he left it on the desk but he’s looked everywhere in his room and it’s nowhere in sight. He tries the kitchen and then the living room and spots it finally on the antique bookshelf. It’s next to an old copy of _A Tale of Two Cities_ , and Jim thinks maybe he should try reading it when he gets back.

The lenses fog a little as he walks, almost making Jim trip a few times. He shivers in the cold and thinks he should have brought a jacket.

City hall looks deserted when he gets there and the silence makes Jim pause. He shakes his head and opens the door, hoping he can seek in through the back where no one can see him. 

And that’s when the screaming starts.

In Jim’s nightmares, Kodos watches it happen with a blank stare. Like a spider perched and waiting over its trap, eight eyes trained all at once and nothing intelligent there. Nothing human. Just the blank indifference of nature, of prey and predator.

In reality, Jim’s sure it was quite different. But his attention was focused on the crowd, on his aunt and uncle, and on the guards as they pulled out old-fashioned rifles and started shooting.

They burn the house down. Jim doesn’t know if the jars of food were taken out first or if they exploded in the heat. He guesses it doesn’t matter now.

The fires are meant to smoke out the sick and the children and any caretakers who stayed behind. There aren’t many, but Jim keeps finding kids, keeps tripping over small bodies curled in on themselves in fear and hunger, and he lets them tag along. They hold tight onto his fingers as they run through the dead fields and past the dead people.

The sky’s black with ash and the ground’s white with mold, and not even the fires can stop its spread.

He feeds his kids what he can—stolen food, meals exchanged for services, any plant that’s edible and not covered in downy white. In some places, even the trees have turned white, turned hollow by the fungus, and their limbs break like bone. But he keeps his kids alive. 

“I’m hungry,” says three-year-old Susan Jinkies. Not Suzie, not Sue, only Susan.

It’s become such a common refrain that Jim doubts she even remembers what the words mean anymore. She just knows there’s something inside her that’s empty and that Jim’s supposed to fill it, but all he can do is shake his head.

“I know,” he says, running his fingers through her tangled hair. “We’ll figure out something soon.”

It’s his turn to stand guard, so he kisses her head and leaves her with the other kids. They’ll have to do a raid soon, but that means spending more time in the fungus and they only have five masks between them. The rest have either been lost or broken, and a lot of the smaller kids didn’t have a mask at all when they showed up. Jim always offers his up, but the others refuse to take it, seemingly aware that he won’t last long in the fungus without one. Not with his allergies.

No one knows what overexposure does. The adults didn’t know, and the kids know even less. Jim thinks it’ll probably turn his insides white, fill him with spores until they fall from his mouth and grow out of his eyes. He’ll suffocate, even with the mask on, even as he breathes clean air, and be hollowed out like the trees. 

Maybe no one will even notice. Maybe the fungus will keep him walking around for days and the only way to know will be the stench.

Jim tightens his mask as he walks. He passes a dead willow tree and thinks about how Sam used to tell him scary stories to make him feel better, to convince him that there are monsters out there bigger than Frank. It didn’t work on Jim and it wouldn’t work on these kids either. Besides, Jim doesn’t have the energy to make up stories about the Weeping Man.

Even as he reaches the lookout point, he’s falling to the ground, his legs giving out. If the fungus doesn’t kill him, the hunger sure will. The cold and the exhaustion and the tight ball that used to be his stomach.

He lays there for a moment, closes his eyes and wants to sleep. If he does die here—and the odds are looking better every day—he wishes he could see Sam and Mom first. Even if they don’t want to see him, even if it’s only their flowers. He just doesn’t want to be alone.

But flowers don’t come from nothing. The last time Jim had spit out sunflower petals, he noticed himself getting dizzy. Noticed that his limbs dragged more after working in the garden and he couldn’t concentrate on his books, so he had picked up Aunt Marie’s medical tricorder when she wasn’t looking and found that he had an iron deficiency. 

It made sense, of course. Plants require iron and the other essential nutrients for life, and the sunflowers had to be getting it from somewhere and that somewhere was Jim. 

So now, lying in the dirt, wishing he could grow a sunflower, Jim finds that he can’t grow a single thing. He’s a starving boy who doesn’t have enough nutrients for himself, much less a flower.

The wind picks up and Jim rises, glancing at the clearing below to make sure he hasn’t missed something. They’ll all die if he doesn’t keep watch, so he sits against a rock and keeps his eyes trained ahead.

He dozes occasionally, but the dreams wake him up. It’s always the kind where he’s falling, where he misses a step on the stairs or leans too far over a ledge and he trips. The kind his brain uses to make sure he’s still alive, and sometimes Jim wonders if that’s what dying feels like. Like his brain trying to wake him up, but he just falls instead and never lands.

Morning’s nearly upon him, the sick forest becoming sicklier in the new light, when he notices something in a bush across the path. He gets up to inspect it and finds a berry with red stems and white fruit.

Baneberry, Jim realizes. He recognizes it from the book Uncle Larry gave him, _The Adaptation of Terran Flora to Alien Soil_. He remembers the picture, smack dab in the middle of the _poisonous plants_ page.

Jim turns to leave, but then his stomach growls and his mouth salivates and before he realizes it he’s ripping his mask off and shoving the berries into his mouth. They’re tart and sour and terrible, but he eats every last one. The flower too, just for good measure.

Once the vomiting starts, he almost hopes it doesn’t end. He doesn’t want to go back to camp, doesn’t want to look Susan in the eye and lie to her. Because they’re all going to die here. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, maybe not even from hunger. But there’s no escaping this planet and they’re all walking corpses who haven’t figured out they’re dead yet.

The berries come out and the flowers too, and Jim lays on the ground shivering. Maybe when he dies, his body will grow a sunflower. Maybe it’ll last a few days before the fungus gets it.

It’s another week before they pull off the raid. By then Susan has already died in her sleep. Another three follow after her and two just disappear. Tommy says that the fungus took them, but Jim doesn’t know what that means.

When Starfleet arrives, Jim cusses out every single officer he can before passing out.

And when he gets back to Iowa and Frank is still there and Winona is still gone, he finally coughs up that sunflower.

❀

Jim’s sixteen and there’s a boy in his chemistry class with black eyes and dark auburn hair.

There’s nothing especially strange about this, except it’s the only reason Jim’s been coming to class the last few weeks.

It’s been three years since Tarsus, but Jim’s still small for his age. His stomach is concave and his arms are straight lines and everyone at school thinks he’s someone’s little brother. Sometimes Peter Davinky in third period will use this as ammo—”Hey, when do you think little Jimmy’s gonna finally hit puberty?”—and no one asks him on dates or pays him much attention at all.

None of that really bothers Jim. He already avoids school as much as he can without the superintendent calling home, and his size makes it easier to avoid Frank. He can fit through windows, out back doors, and maybe in and out of the bakery before anyone notices he’s there. There and gone like a sleight of hand, and he counts his small size as a blessing.

That opinion changes once he meets Luis.

The kid’s tall—”legs for days,” as his aunt would have put it, and she probably would have winked too—and he has a natural musculature. The kind of boyish definition to his arms that makes him look strong and soft at the same time. He’s a little quiet and he has brown skin that turns gold in the sun and sometimes Jim gets caught in the deep black of his eyes and forgets how much he hates the world.

Jim wonders if he should start lifting weights.

He’s not paying attention when Ms. Thurthrop announces lab partners until he hears “Jim Kirk and Luis Jimenez,” and then Jim’s sitting up, his head turning toward Luis, who seems to have had his head tucked into a book and looks just as surprised as Jim feels.

Luis smiles at him and Jim smiles back, and that afternoon he skips English so that he can go to the school gym and become acquainted with the machines. His arms ache on the way home and he hums as he walks up the stairs. Hell, maybe he’ll hack through Frank’s restrictions and replicate a protein shake later.

The lab lasts a week and Jim’s sure Luis must like him back. He leans toward Jim every time he speaks, their shoulders touching as he looks at Jim’s notes. They both like science, so they exchange comm numbers and spend hours talking about the stars, and Luis doesn’t ask even once about Jim’s dad or why he never comes to class or where his mom is.

"We can go to space together," Jim tells him one night. "Learn about new plants, new people. Get a ship and get away from this rock and just keep going."

Every day that week Jim skips English and goes to the gym instead. He looks in the mirror at home and thinks his biceps might be getting bigger.

Chemistry is cancelled on Friday for an assembly, and Jim pushes his way through the crowd so he can sit next to Luis as the principal talks about fundraisers and the homecoming dance. As it ends, the choir starts to sing and it’s when they both laugh at the off-key soprano in the back that Jim makes his decision.

Once school lets out, he takes Luis to the old-fashioned diner on the corner—it’s strange, Jim thinks, how a town can live in the shadow of a shipyard and all the star-bound vessels built there and still be so nostalgic—and they drink milkshakes and Jim asks,

“Do you want to go to homecoming with me?”

The apology is in Luis’ eyes before it’s on his lips. Jim shrinks away as if expecting a blow.

“I’m not gay, Jim. Sorry.”

“OK,” Jim says.

He walks home in the dark, scrubbing the tears from his face because he doesn’t want Frank to see. He was stupid, so _stupid_ for thinking Luis would like him, for thinking anyone would like him. It wouldn’t matter if he was tall or had abs or didn’t look like a kid who had all but starved to death and whose stepfather who didn’t feed him. They would still look at him and know he was bad.

Before he realizes it, there’s something coming up his throat, and Jim ends up on the ground, heaving as his stomach empties milkshake and something else into the dirt. 

It’s lavender, he realizes as he blinks away the tears. He almost didn’t recognize it in the dark, but it’s definitely lavender. He pulls another stem from his throat, gagging as it comes out.

After that, Jim more or less drops out of school. Luis tries comming him a few times, but Jim doesn’t answer, and eventually he gives up. School means Luis and it means other kids with bright smiles and long lashes, so Jim stays home instead, working odd jobs that give him money for food.

Frank leaves right after Jim’s eighteenth birthday, skipping town with what’s left of Winona’s money. Jim’s not sure why he took so long, but guesses that he waited until Jim was an adult so that he could look back years from now and say that he did right by that Kirk kid.

And Jim grows, finally. He has a new body and learns how to use it and learns what kind of words will get him into someone’s bed.

He never stays the night. Doesn’t even ask for a name. Jim knows himself and he knows that he falls in love fast and hard and god, he can’t fall in love, can’t cough up more flowers, not when his throat is already so sore from the nightmares.

The sunflowers never do stop, not completely.

Of course, it’s the one time he breaks his own rule and asks for the girl’s name—Uhura, first name as yet undetermined—that everything changes.

❀

Jim is twenty two and no one is surprised when he leaves Iowa. There’s no one left _to be_ surprised.

He arrives at Starfleet Academy with only the clothes on his back and a wide grin that makes the bar brawl bruises hurt. Cadets run past clad in red, laughing and shouting at their friends, and Jim wonders if he’s going to die here. If he’ll do it in three years or if he’ll fall in love first and choke to death on someone’s favorite oversized dahlia.

The first year passes without incident, much to Jim’s surprise. He even makes a few friends and discovers a new favorite pastime: tormenting his doctor roommate.

“Bones!” he shouts as he bursts into the room, jumping onto the sleeping man’s bed. “I need your help.”

The doctor jolts upright, a look of alarm on his face until he realizes it’s Jim who’s woken him and his features turn into a scowl.

“No, you don’t,” he says, glancing at the clock. “Not until at least 0900. Until then, you can solve your own problems.”

“This is a time-sensitive matter,” Jim says, grinning as he reclines against the wall. “I need you to write me a note for my xenobiology class.”

“Just skip,” Bones grumbles as he rolls back over, his legs kicking out as if to push Jim off.

“Can’t. We get graded on attendance and I’ve already missed two classes.”

“And what’s so important that has you missing a third?”

“I volunteered to help calibrate telescopes at the observatory. There’s going to be a meteor shower tonight in the Medusan system.”

“So it’s all going to be in the name of science?” Bones asks skeptically as he sits up to glare at Jim.

“Yeah. Plus I told Gaila I’d be there and I’m pretty sure I’ll get lucky tonight if I show up.”

A pillow hits Jim’s face as his friend groans. 

“I will not be complicit in your debauchery. Either go to class or skip and face the consequences.

“Please?” Jim whines before catching himself. He schools his expression into something less frantic and hopes that Bones didn’t notice the desperation in his voice. His friend doesn’t need to know about the cadet in xenobiology who sits up front and wears daisy earrings and flips her hair back whenever she knows the answer. It’s just a stirring right now, just something soft around the edges, but Jim doesn’t know if he’s allergic to daisies and he doesn’t intend to find out.

Bones watches him for a moment and he must have noticed something in Jim’s expression because he sighs and says, “Alright. But I have evening rounds for the next week, so you have to promise not to wake me up before noon. Otherwise no deal.”

“No problem,” Jim says as he jumps from the bed. “Just send it to Professor Brando and I’ll leave you alone for the rest of the week.”

The meteor party is a hit—a few overexcited first years insist they saw a ship among the meteors, which is nonsense of course because the Medusan system is uninhabited, but it gets everyone talking about what Medusans might look like—and Jim takes Gaila back to his dorm once Bones has left his shift. He avoids the cadet with daisy earrings and starts to sit in the back where he can’t hear her laugh. Another year and three quarters of this and Jim thinks he might just survive to see the inside of a starship.

So when, a few weeks later, he wakes up with something in his throat and he has to rush into the bathroom to let out a bundle of roses—and who in the fuck does he know who even likes roses?—it’s the most he can do not to kick and scream and call foul on the universe.

It’s not the vomiting that tips Bones off or the allergic reactions or even the stray petals that find their way out in the middle of the cafeteria. Nothing about that is particularly strange for Jim, and his friend just gives him a few worried glances and tells him to drink less and be more careful. He seems not to notice the petals, and Jim slips them into his pockets.

Bones does, however, notice the way Jim loses his color and stops rising early. He doesn’t say anything at first, just glares as Jim comes back from class and collapses on the bed, sometimes pulling out his tricorder before Jim can wave him off.

He must finally scan him while he’s asleep, because Jim wakes up to Bones frowning down at him, a tricorder in one hand and a hypo in the other.

“You have an iron deficiency,” he says, jabbing the hypo into Jim’s neck. “And pernicious anemia. Which is strange because I’ve seen your meal card and I know for a fact that you should be getting enough iron and B-12.”

Jim shrugs. “Must be vampires.” And then he starts coughing and a rose falls right onto Bones’ shoe.

“Well, shit,” Bones says.

It takes some time, but Jim convinces Bones that he doesn’t need to go to the hospital. He’ll go back to his nap and Bones can go to the library and do all the research he wants, and they’ll meet up back here in an hour or five.

When Jim wakes again, it’s to Bones scowling down at him. The sun’s nearly set and the shadows are long on his friend’s face, and Jim wonders if he’s about to be kicked out of the Academy.

“It’s Hanahaki Disease,” Bones says. “Extremely rare, but of course Jim ‘Special Snowflake’ Kirk would be born with a condition that affects one in a billion people worldwide.”

“So not vampires?” Jim asks. His friend won’t stop scowling, and he straightens up to look at him.

“No, but that would be about as easy to treat. Everything I read said that the flowers are the result of unrequited love.”

“Oh,” Jim says. “That makes sense.”

Bones sighs as he sits next to him. “How long has this been happening?”

“The roses? A few weeks now. But I started coughing up sunflowers when I was five.”

“Five? What was it, little Cindy Lou Who didn’t like you back?”

“No,” Jim says, laughing. “That wasn’t it.”

His friend looks at him for a moment, his brow furrowing, before he continues. “There’s a psychic component to the disease. That’s how it picks the flower; it latches onto the object of your affections and starts growing whatever corsage the wore to prom, I guess. And—now here’s the real kicker—it only occurs in patients who have exhibited some form of ESP.”

“Wait, does that mean I’m psychic?”

“If you’re asking whether or not you should start a fortune-telling business, the answer is no,” Bones says, his eyes rolling briefly heavenward. “My guess is that you’re a low-level empath. It’s common for empaths, especially ones who aren’t aware of their abilities, to fly under the radar, and I’ve observed on several occasions that you’re very responsive to the emotions of people around you.”

“Is that why I’m so good at sex?” Jim asks, frowning.

“ _So_ ,” Bones continues, not even sparing Jim a glance, “we need to determine who it’s latched onto.”

“I don’t know,” Jim says. “It’s—in the past, it’s always been obvious. But right now, I honestly have no idea.”

“I thought that might be the case given your promiscuity,” Bones says, ignoring the indignant shout from Jim. “I did some reading and one study suggests that the condition’s exacerbated when it latches onto another telepath. The author thought it may have acted like a communicable disease, so I need to know if you’ve been in close association with any telepaths in the last four weeks.”

“Close association as in…”

“Let’s go with the exchange of bodily fluids,” Bones says as he pulls out his padd.

“Well, there’s Gary.”

Bones gives him a look. “Gary’s human, right?”

“Yeah, but he always knows what I’m thinking. Sometimes before I do. It’s creepy.”

“OK. Creepy and telepathic aren’t the same thing, but it’s worth looking into.” Bones pauses to make a note. “who else?”

“There was a betazoid, but all we ever did was make out.”

“Like I said, Jim. The exchange of bodily fluids, which includes spit. This isn’t a telepathic STD."

Jim takes a moment to ponder a reality where telepathic STDs exist before he continues. “Or it could be Uhura.”

“Why? Is she creepy too?”

“No, but she is scary. She can read people like nobody’s business.”

“Wait,” Bones says, pausing in his note taking. “When did you sleep with Uhura?”

“Jeez, Bones, get your head out of the gutter! You’re the one who said this wasn’t a telepathic STD! Anyways, she spat on me.”

“She _spa_ —WHY?”

Jim frowns. “You know, I never found out.”

“OK, you know what?” Bones says, and Jim doesn’t need empathy to know his best friend’s annoyed; the vein popping out of his temple is tell enough. “Make me a list of all possible contenders. Anyone you slept with, anyone you shared food with, anyone who _spat on you_ in the last four weeks.”

“OK,” Jim says, finally sobering. “But do you really think it’ll make a difference? This has happened to me before, and knowing who I was in love with then did fuck all.” 

“Jim, look,” Bone says, his body sagging a little into the bed. “I don’t know how to treat this. And knowing you, you’re not going to conform to any case studies. But anything that helps, anything that might give me a clue about how to treat your very rare and very stupid flower disease, I want to know about it.”

Jim studies his friend, the furrowed brows and the pointedly averted eyes trained onto his padd. 

The roses are an unpleasant surprise. The thorns scratch his insides and his allergies get worse with every attack. Every time, his throat constricts a little farther, and Jim figures it’s only a matter of time before it closes completely.

But they’re not sunflowers. Before he came here and even for a while after, Jim had been so sure the sunflowers would kill him. That his veins would turn green and his chest would expand and he’d be burst through with flowers. Maybe he’d finally grow those giant ones that reach into the sky he wanted so badly as a kid and all it would take was his death. 

When Jim boarded that shuttle, he’d felt something like relief because either he’d do it in three or he’d choke to death trying, and either option was better than continuing to pretend to live here in Iowa.

But there hadn’t been a single sunflower. Never, not in a million years, not in the countless nights of shivering and choking on leaves and blood, did he imagine that there could be another option. That he could find a new kind of love and someone who loved him in return—someone to keep the flowers at bay. 

Jim had scoffed when Pike talked about no-win scenarios; after all, here he was, living and losing every single day. But now, after a few months of ease, of friendship, of a nasal passage that didn’t grow sunflowers, he was beginning to think there was something to it. 

“Hey, Bones,” Jim starts a little cautiously. “What’s your favorite flower?”

The doctor looks up in surprise. “Me? I don’t think I have one.”

“There has to be one you think is pretty.”

“I guess I like bachelor’s button.” He sees the look on Jim’s face and clarifies, “Cornflower.”

Jim grins and hugs him and suddenly that vein in Bones’ temple is back.

It only takes a week for Jim to figure it out. 

Mid-semester break has already started and the halls echo with the students’ absence as Jim walks out of Professor Brando’s office. He’s one of the few staying on campus for the break; even Bones is taking a shuttle back to Georgia later that day. He’d offered to take Jim with him, especially given his “flower problem,” but Jim had insisted that he’d be fine by himself and had some studying to catch up on anyways.

It’s a warm day and Jim strays from his usual path, letting his feet lead until he ends up on the back lawn. The leaves have already started changing, and Jim has that full-body fatigue, the kind that only comes from marathon test-taking and a B-12 deficiency, so he finds a spot in the sun and stretches out. As long as he doesn’t fall asleep and is back in time to see Bones off, it’ll be fine.

There hasn’t been a single petal since their discussion last week and Jim allows himself to hope that the crush—and it has to be a crush because surely he’d know if he were head over heels—has already passed. It may have been brief, but Jim has school to focus on after all, and hardly any time for pining. He’d spent most of last night working on Roschfield’s equation and adapting it to warp theory, and he’s pretty sure he got it right on the test, just as long as he remembered to use the square root and multiply by _e_ , which reminds him of the essay he wrote for Brando comparing the Denobulan period of hibernation to that of the terran bear.

A twig snaps, and Jim’s not sure if he fell asleep, but he’s awake now, peering around the lawn, guessing at the time from the position of the sun. It’s only been a few minutes, he realizes, and he stretches, wondering if he should start to head back. He’s about to get up when he notices a figure by the observatory.

It takes a few moments of squinting to make her out, but it’s Uhura. He can tell from the length of her hair and the set of her shoulders. The light changes as the sun comes out from behind a cloud and he can see her face now. There’s another figure there too, approaching her slowly with an arm raised in greeting. This one’s taller and appears to be a man based on the hip to shoulder ratio and distinctive dorito shape. 

Jim’s in the middle of thinking that he should pick up some doritos later when Uhura and the man approach and their fingers join.

It’s like the universe breaks, like he’s caught in the smallest ever time loop, because it happens all at once. His stomach flips and his chest constricts and there’s something pushing against his lungs, his ribs, his heart, and then it’s pushing up his throat too, but his throat is already closing and that time loop isn’t so tiny when it seems to last an eternity.

It’s another rose and it’s _not coming out_. 

He stumbles onto his knees and then onto his legs, then back onto his knees because he can’t remember the last time he’s been this scared. He can’t _breathe_ and he was finally beginning to think that life was maybe worth living and Uhura and the mystery dorito man are just silhouettes now as the sun begins to set.

They’re about to turn a corner, to disappear behind the observatory, and Jim manages to stand and stagger a few paces because fuck, he really doesn’t want to die like this. 

“H-help,” he shouts—or he tries to, but it comes out as a wheeze. Still, even with his vision fastly fading, he thinks he sees the dorito man stop and tilt his head. Jim opens his mouth to try again but petals come out instead and he falls hard onto the ground.

The petals are black. Either that or they’re covered in blood and his vision’s failing him. And yes, Jim realizes, maybe he does have a crush on Uhura, and fuck it all, it sure would be stupidly on-the-nose if she started favoring black roses just in time for them to kill him.

Then Uhura’s there standing over him and so is the dorito man. She’s saying something he can’t hear and Jim looks at the dorito man with the professor uniform and dark eyes and shiny nightcap and right before he passes out he thinks,

 _OK, so maybe she has a good reason for favoring black_.

There’s a rattling breath in his dreams. 

Pained gasps and drawn-out exhales, and Jim doesn’t know if it’s coming from him or someone else. He thinks he sees the Weeping Man out there in the darkness, and his flowers are as still and silent as he is, no breath left to disturb them, and so it must be coming from Jim.

He must have flowers in his chest, and that’s the realization that jolts him awake.

There’s something down his throat and he pulls at it with clumsy fingers still weak with sleep. It must be vines or roots and he can’t get it out, and his eyes fill with tears because it’s killing him.

“Jim, what the hell?” cries a familiar voice, but Jim’s too busy gagging around whatever’s in his throat to listen. “Stop that! You’ve been intubated!”

Strong hands wrap around his own shaking ones and now Bones is there, his face white and vein popping. Jim tries to explain that he can’t breathe but it comes out as a choked sob. 

“Calm down, Jimbo,” he says softly, tugging at Jim’s wrists until he lets go. “You’ll be able to breathe just fine if you calm down. Now, I want you to listen to me and breathe when I tell you. Can you do that?”

Jim nods shakily, blinking the tears out of his eyes.

“Good. Now breathe in”—a pause—”and out. In”—a pause—”and out.”

Jim matches his breaths to Bones’ voice, focusing on the deep rumble in his friend’s chest and the warm hands now wrapped around his arms. He feels sleep dragging him down and resists it as long as he can, but he thinks Bones must have slipped him a hypo because soon his eyes are closing and he can once again see flowers on the inside of his lids.

The next time Jim wakes, the tube is gone and his throat is raw. 

It’s twilight now; he can tell from the orange glow in the room and the dim light reflecting off Bones’ back. His friend’s turned away from him, bent over a chart as he mutters under his breath.

“What are you doing here?” Jim rasps accusingly, and Bones jumps, a clatter resounding through the room as a tray falls to the floor.

“Fuck,” Bones mumbles before looking up at Jim. “What do you mean, what am i doing here? What does it look like? I’m making sure you don’t die.”

“No,” Jim says, wincing as his throat protests, “what are you doing in San Francisco? You’re supposed to be in Georgia.”

“I just told you,” Bones says, leaning toward him with a scowl. “I’m here keeping you alive. Which seems to be a full-time job.”

“No,” Jim says, his voice rising. “You’re supposed to be with your daughter. You’ve been looking forward to it for weeks.”

“Shut up and I’ll do something about your throat,” Bones says as he reaches for a regenerator. “Yes, I was going to go to Georgia. Yes, I was going to see Joanna. But that was before you decided to shuffle off the mortal coil two hours before my shuttle left.”

“I didn’t mean to! You didn’t have to stay!” Jim says desperately, pushing Bones’ hand away. He can feel tears rising in his eyes again. “I would have been fine with someone else!”

“Jimbo, stop,” Bones says as he drops the tricorder and sits heavily next to the bed. “You don’t get it. You shouldn’t even be alive right now. You wouldn’t be if it weren’t for that Vulcan professor who brought you in.”

“Vulcan?” Jim asks, frowning.

“Mmh. He’s a mean sonuvabitch from what I’ve heard, but he saved your life. You had a punctured lung, internal hemorrhaging, severe oxygen deprivation. He used some kind of Vulcan voodoo to slow down your autonomic responses, and even then you coded twice. If I had been there, I would have done an impromptu tracheostomy—cut a hole in your neck and inserted a straw into your windpipe—which would have been a whole lot less pretty and probably unsuccessful. If it had just been Uhura there, you never would have had a chance.”

“Oh,” Jim says and takes a respectful moment to ponder his own mortality. “But you still could have left after I was stable.”

His friend lets out a loud groan and rises from his chair. “Jimmy, it’s fine.”

“No, it’s not! How long have I been out?”

“About three days.”

“Then you still have time! What are you doing talking to me when you should be at the shuttle station?” And with that, Jim’s larynx decides it’s had enough and he breaks into a coughing fit.

“Jesus, Jimbo. Calm down and let me fix your throat.” 

Jim nods reluctantly and leans back onto the bed. 

“Now if you’d just let me talk,” Bones continues, “you’d know that Joanna’s mother and I had a conversation. She agreed to let Jo come here for the week—hold still, for Christ’s sake, it’s not like you have somewhere to be—and I’m going to pick her up from the station tomorrow.”

“Really?” Jim says as soon as Bones removes the regenerator. “Can she come here?”

Bones frowns. “To the hospital?”

“Yeah! I might not get to meet her otherwise.” Jim looks up at his friend, sending him one of the best smiles in his arsenal—closed-mouth with just a little too much lip.

“I guess that’s alright,” Bones ways with a sigh. “Just don’t scare her by hacking up any more flowers.”

“Scout’s honor,” Jim says, beaming. “Hey, did I cough up a black rose or did I hallucinate that part?”

“Blacker than Satan’s morning cup o’ joe. To mark the occasion of your passing, I assume. Who knew Jim Kirk was so cliche?”

“Hey!” Jim exclaims. “It’s not my fault! Blame Uhura!”

“Wait,” Bones says, “it’s Uhura? You finally figured it out?”

“Oh, yeah. I guess I like women who can kill me with just a look.” Bones sends him a heartfelt scowl and Jim says, “It’s not as hot when you do it.”

“Well, thankfully, you’re not in love with me.”

“I don’t think I’m in love with her either. It’s more like a crush.”

“So an unrequited crush?” Bones asks and Jim nods. “That almost killed you.” Jim shrugs and nods again. “Lord have mercy.”

“Hey, do you still have the rose?”

Bones nods. “And it’s still in one piece, surprisingly enough. I kept it to run some tests, but so far all we’ve learned is that it’s just a garden variety rose. No alien tissue, no human DNA, just one hundred percent _Rosa sericea_.”

“Can I have it? When you’re done?”

His friend eyes him as if trying to decide just how much energy he can expend in one day arguing with Jim Kirk. 

“You know what? Sure. And I’m not even going to ask why, so don’t tell me. Just keep it at least five feet away from the bed and make sure you get your allergy booster.”

“Thanks, Bones. You’re the best.”

“You’d think he would have said that after I saved his life,” his friend mutters, turning back to his equipment, “but no. It’s because I agreed to hand him his own murder weapon.”

Jim laughs a little too long and a little too loud, and Bones seems to take this as a sign that it’s time to sedate him again. This time, when he closes his eyes, he sees flowers in the shape of lungs, expanding and contracting with deep, gasping breaths. 

Uhura stops by the next day, bursting into the room just as Jim’s about to doze off, and holding a bouquet of roses.

“See,” he says, laughing as he eyes the red flowers, “this is why I love you.”

She smiles—it’s probably one of the first genuine smiles he’s seen from her—and gestures toward the vase sitting next to him. 

“I thought I should offer a memento mori, but I see you already have one.”

“I can always use another. Just don’t let Bones see it.” She gives him a blank look and he rushes to clarify, “My doctor. He has a terrible sense of humor.”

Her lips quirk upward and Jim’s chest tightens at the sight. Really, she shouldn’t be here. He should thank her for the roses, assure her he’s fine, and pretend he’s too tired for visitors.

“So, obviously,” she says, “I have to ask. Why—or maybe it should be _how_ —did you cough up a rose?”

Jim looks at her, considering his options. Honesty would be easier and he can’t help but feel like he owes it to her. But honesty is a burden, too, and one she doesn’t need.

“Would you believe me if I said I had a rare disease that makes me puke up flowers?”

“I sure wouldn’t.”

Jim smiles. “I didn’t think so.” She continues to stare at him, her eyes narrowed, so he scrambles for a lie. “What if I said I swallowed it?”

Her eyes narrow further. “I wouldn’t believe that one either.”

“OK,” he says, sighing in faux defeat. “I ate something in one of the science labs. It looked like chocolate, tasted like dirt, turns out it was an experiment one of the botany kids left lying around.”

Her laughter fills the room, fills the air that Jim’s breathing, fills his still-sore lungs, and for a moment he struggles to breathe against the sight of her smile and her head thrown back.

She wipes a tear from her eye as the laughter recedes and says, “You’re an idiot, Kirk.”

Jim grins, hoping it’s one of his less besotted smiles and more shit-eating. “And you’re sweet.”

There’s a single knock at the door and a man enters, tall and lean and—oh. This must be the professor Bones mentioned. The man he saw by the observatory with the dark eyes.

“Nyota,” he says, frowning down at what looks like a wilted garden salad, “I failed to obtain a Julius Caesar salad from the cafeteria. They had an extremely limited offering and I believe we will have to depart for a dining establishment if you wish to partake in a mid-day meal.”

“Nyota?” Jim says, a little shrill and entirely disruptive of the fond look Uhura just sent the Vulcan. “So your name’s Nyota?”

Uhura groans, already rising from her seat. “Thanks, Spock. You just ruined it.”

The Vulcan—Spock—looks between them and Jim doesn’t know the guy but he thinks he sees something resembling confusion cross his stony features. “I apologize, but I do not understand what it is that I have ruined.”

“Don’t worry about it, Spock,” Uhura says, her fond smile back. “I’ll explain later. Let’s just get out of here.”

She turns from him without a second glance, and Jim feels his chest tighten. His throat, too, and then there’s a burning sensation that nearly has him sputtering.

He must have made a noise because he looks up and they’re both staring at him, Uhura’s mouth forming a small moue. 

“Uh,” he says, trying to clear his throat. “I just want to thank you guys. For saving my life. Sounds like I wouldn’t have had a chance if you hadn’t been there.” He glances between them before smiling. “Professor. _Nyota_.”

Uhura’s already giving him the stink eye, but Spock speaks first. “Thanks are unnecessary, cadet. I am obligated to help any student in physical distress.”

Jim laughs, hoping it’ll disguise his wheezing. “Well, thank you anyway.”

“And how about we stick to last names, Kirk?” Uhura says, still glaring. “If we’re good enough friends to be on a first-name basis, I might think it’s OK to start telling everyone about the stunt you pulled to get into the hospital.”

“Sure thing, Uhura,” Jim says, and Uhura looks surprised at his easy acquiescence. “Hey, if you see Bones on your way out, could you send him this way? No rush or anything.”

“Uh, sure,” she says, frowning. “I’ll see you around, Kirk.”

“Yeah, see yah.” He puts on his best million-watt smile until they’re both in the hallway—”Is Bones a common moniker for humans?” Spock asks right before the door slides shut—and only then does he break into a coughing fit. 

He’s concentrating so hard on breathing that he barely notices the alarms goes off, and then suddenly Bones is right there and fuck he doesn’t want to do this again but he guesses there’s no stopping it now, so he gives Bones the best smile he can and hopes it adequately conveys the sentiment of _well, here’s hoping I survive this one_ .

The next day there are two roses sitting by his bed, one black and one blue. 

Bones brings Joanna by; he’s a little reluctant after that last attack, but he seems to think that Jim needs cheering up. She’s shy, seemingly wary of Jim and whatever “owie” put him in the hospital, but then he points to the roses and tells her they were inside him and her face brightens.

The words “slumber party” start getting tossed around, and in the end Bones acquiesces with only a few grumbles. Jim tells a story about the Weeping Man, and Joanna loves it, is clearly braver than Jim was at her age, but Bones gives him a look, so he changes the story into a tale about a knight who stands by the willow tree waiting to be united with his one true love.

“So,” Bones says once Joanna has nodded off, “are you going to tell Uhura?

Jim shakes his head. “She’s already dating that Vulcan professor.”

“Really? Do you think that’s something we should be worried about?”

“No,” he says. “I’ll ask Gaila, but I think Uhura can handle herself.”

Uhura doesn’t visit again and Jim tries not to miss her. 

Bones releases him finally just as students are starting to return. He takes to partying more than he should and finds that he can measure his own debauchery by the depth of Bones’ frown the next day. He’ll stop, he promises. It’s just that he needs some mindless nights and casual sex to wash the roses from his lungs.

Sometimes he thinks about going back home. It would be the easier option; just drop out and leave and never think about Uhura again. But Jim knows that there’s nothing there except dead sunflowers and a house full of ghosts.

So he stays and he parties a little too much. He sleeps around and eventually he can look at Uhura without choking, and then he sleeps around some more because there’s no way in Hell he’s going to get attached to anyone else. 

It’s strange, but sometimes he’ll see that Vulcan professor in the distance and feel his chest tighten, almost as if hands had reached into his chest, knitted through the bones and the veins, found his laboring lungs, and squeezed.

Even stranger, the feeling doesn’t go away after the Kobayashi Maru. It doesn’t go away after Nero and it doesn’t go away even after Jim gets the _Enterprise_ and Spock becomes his first officer. 

In fact, it only gets worse.

❀

It’s the first thing they teach you in first-year survival class. If you can taste metal, run.

Radiation poisoning is no longer the death sentence it used to be. Bones even talked about it once during one of his stranger drunken rants—how he can treat the burns, can counteract the cellular decay, can even take preventative measures against the rapid division of cells that leads to cancer. Jim could walk straight through Chernobyl or X’tadslk and be fine the next day, but that’s only if Bones got to him in time. Because, really, there’s only so much that can be done once your DNA starts to unravel. That’s when the hair starts to fall out and the burns won’t heal and the vomiting starts and the fever and then the very painful death. 

So, generally, it’s advised that, if you can taste metal, you start walking the other way. Ideally at a pace a few beats above andante. And take your iodine shot if you have it on you.

Jim’s twenty six and he can taste metal. 

It’s almost a relief actually because all he’s been able to taste for the last few weeks—it only started to get really bad after Nibiru and the volcano, but it started well before that—has been dirt. Dirt and leaves and something he suspects is a flower from Vulcan. The old Vulcan, the one that blew up, Vulcan-that-was, as Spock sometimes calls it. And by “suspects,” he means _thought vaguely about before pushing away into a closet because the world’s ending again and he doesn’t have time to deal with flowers_.

He guesses he doesn’t have much time now either as he lies on the floor of the decontamination chamber, his skin burning and his mouth tasting like metal.

He’d imagined, even when he was back on Tarsus, that death would feel like falling. Not so much in a romantic way—he’d been in enough freefalls in his life to know that they hurt more than anything—or even in a fun, bungee-jumping way. He’d imagined it would be like tripping. Like when you’re on the verge of sleep and your brain wants to make sure you’re still alive so you almost-dream about falling down the stairs. He’d imagined it would be like that—except, of course, you didn’t wake up when you hit bottom.

His eyesight is failing—he doesn’t know what radiation does to optical nerves, though he imagines it can’t be good—but he still sees Spock the moment he arrives.

And Jim’s heart clenches. He’s still dorito-shaped, still with those dark eyes, still with that nightcap of hair. His heart clenches and his mouth falls open because he wants Spock to know about the flowers, where they’re from and why they’re growing out of Jim’s lungs, even though he’s barely had the courage to acknowledge them himself.

But death hangs heavily upon him and that’s a whole lot of words, so instead he says, “How’s our ship?”

For just a moment, Jim thinks the glass has gone because Spock’s face is right there. 

“Out of danger,” he says.

“Good,” Jim breathes as he tries to focus his eyes, tries to see the man only inches from him. And it is good, but it would be so much better if Jim could just touch him.

“You saved the crew,” Spock says, and Jim’s eyes focus enough to see that Spock is trying to console him, trying to reassure him that his death won’t be for nothing. And fuck, Jim knew he was dying, but he didn’t quite believe it until he saw that.

“You used what he wanted against him,” Jim says. “That’s a good move.”

“It is what you would have done.”

“And this.....this is what you would have done. It was only logical.”

Spock doesn’t respond to that. He just looks at him and every cell in Jim’s body is alight, but he’s still shaking with cold.

“I’m scared, Spock,” he says. “Help me not be. How do you choose not to feel?”

“I do not know. Right now I am failing.”

Jim watches the grief pass over Spock’s face and thinks of flowers again, of the things growing in his lungs, but he knows somehow that these words will be his last, and his mind is grasping out but can’t quite find what he wants to say, so instead his mouth opens and he whispers, “I want you to know why I couldn’t let you die. Why I went back for you.”

“Because you are my friend.”

Without thinking, Jim raises his hand to glass. If Jim’s an empath, maybe he can still tell Spock, maybe he can put his love into the tips of his fingers and the ends of his nerves and the molecules of the glass and he can make Spock feel it. For a moment he thinks it might have worked because Spock raises his hand in turn and forms the ta’al. But he looks into Spock’s eyes and there’s nothing—no understanding, no dawning realization, just grief and a tear that Jim wishes he could brush away. 

He couldn’t remove his hand even if he wanted to. He can’t move at all now, his body failing, breath stuttering, 

mind tripping and 

then

he

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for
> 
> Child abuse  
> Tarsus IV and associated triggers, including child death, starvation, a (non graphic) massacre, and resulting body image issues  
> Also in the Tarsus section: what could be interpreted as a suicide attempt and is at the very least a death wish
> 
> Let me know if there's something else you want flagged!


	2. Part Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay! This one ended up being longer than it was supposed to.
> 
> Additional warnings in the end notes!

Vulcans do not dream.

Once as a child, Spock had crept into his father’s office during the small hours of the long Vulcan night. He was a curious child and always anxious to demonstrate his precocity, and so he had hurried across the floor to his father’s rolling chair, climbed into it, and then carefully pulled himself onto the edge of the desk. 

From there, he could nearly reach the books on the uppermost shelf and, slowly, he hooked his finger under the cover of the largest volume and worked at it with careful pulls until it was teetering on the edge.

Spock was small for his age and the book was nearly half his weight. So when it fell, he had very little influence on its downward trajectory, and the sharp edge of the hardcover hit his head and knocked him to the floor.

His leg slammed against the desk’s edge as he fell, leaving a long abrasion on his calf. Spock did not cry, however, only scrambled toward the tome and ran his fingers along the binding. Vulcans have rather linear brains, usually moving from one to two, a to b, but Spock, in a startling display of whimsy, did not start at the beginning. He let chance guide his hand that night and opened to a page midway through.

The words—those of Surak, once thought to be lost, restored to Vulcan society through the efforts and sacrifice of the Syrranites and most especially the courage of Spock’s grandmother, T’Pau, whose mind had brushed against Surak’s very katra—rose before him. And on the top of that page, written in neat Vulcan script with slightly tapered lines as if Surak himself had put them there, were the words Spock would never forget: _Ri run-tor V’tosh_.

Vulcans do not dream.

Spock stared at those words, traced small fingers along the lettering, and began to wonder. Was this an edict, a commandment, or a statement of fact? A catechism to be repeated until the dreaming world could be banished from one’s mind? Was this a value judgment, the measuring stick against which all Vulcans were judged?

The page did not answer his questions, nor did the pages that followed. He read the entire chapter and the one after and could find nothing to explain the words. All he knew was that Vulcans do not dream and that Spock, regularly and with quite an amount of creativity, did.

Often he dreamt of flying—over Shikahr, over the deserts and mountains, sometimes straight into space and to new worlds. Sometimes he dreamt of Earth. He had not yet visited his mother’s home planet, but he knew that it was blue, so he would dream of an entire planet colored in shades of blue. 

And sometimes, though not often, he dreamt of helping his mother garden and of his favorite flower—the twil’la. They had red leaves and blue petals and, though he would never admit it to anyone, Spock often thought they were a little bit like himself. Because he was from a red planet and a blue planet and his mother sometimes said he had a little bit of both inside him.

Without realizing, Spock had started to cry. Started to bawl, though he could not entirely explain why. His mother found him there on the office floor, still bent over the volume of Surak, and cooed over his scraped leg and the bump on his head. He was still very small and very upset and he accepted her comfort, but he would not tell her the real reason for his “crocodile tears.” If she knew, she would tell Sarek, and then Sarek would tell T’Pau, and then the women who had once touched Surak’s katra would know that Spock often dreamed. 

So Spock told no one.

Even as he grew, he kept it a secret. Even when he learned that meditation was meant to take the place of dreams and Sarek taught him to pull stray thoughts from his subconscious and exam them in the soft glow of candlelight. Even after he realized that, though it was considered a grievous slip in control, full-blooded Vulcans also dreamed on occasion. And even after his dreams became scarce as he entered adulthood and then stopped altogether. He told no one and did not dwell on it, because he did not want to remember that night in father’s study—the smell of copper blood, the taste of his tears, the hard and bone-shaking hiccups when the sobs faded.

Vulcans do not dream, and neither did Spock.

Tonight, however, Spock is dreaming.

There are no flowers tonight, no flights of fancy. Only a glass wall in the dark and behind it his captain. Jim. Jim, who is not moving, does not appear to be breathing, who is ghostly white in the places not covered by radiation burns. 

Spock slams his fist against the wall, desperate this time to break the barrier, to touch him, to breathe the life back into him. A second punch and then a third, and then he sends his entire body crashing against the wall. Only then does he see the movement of Jim’s eyelids.

He is not alive, Spock knows. His chest still does not move. But Jim’s eyes open and, though Spock knows that the capillaries of the iris are the first to recede after death and that Jim’s should already have turned grey, they are still the eyes that Spock knows. They turn towards him, still dead and cold, but for a moment Spock is caught in the round, blue world contained there.

As he rushes again at the glass, the scene changes. Spock stumbles in his surprise, but his blow still lands, and now they are on the bridge and Jim is below him, bent over the console as Spock’s fist connects with his face. He is alive now, still clad in the black, his face mottled with bruises instead of angry burns. 

Someone screams for Spock to stop, but he strikes again and hears the satisfying _snap_ of a nose breaking. Again and Jim’s jaw dislocates and hangs, crooked and gaping. Jim’s eyes are alive and bright blue and filled with fear. He raises his hands feebly in defense, but Spock’s aim is sure and true, and he strikes again, shattering his right eye socket.

“Spock.” It is not even a whisper. It is a weak tightening of muscles, a broken jaw working uselessly around letters and thoughts, a gurgle as blood fills Jim’s mouth. “I’m scared, Spock. Help me not be.”

They are strange words and Spock doesn’t understand them. He raises his fist once more, ignoring the hands on his arm as they attempt to restrain him and calculates the exact psi, if aimed at the sphenoparietal suture, required to break a human skull.

It takes only a moment, a moment longer to look at Jim’s face and notice the fear and something deeper and desperate written there. Spock almost wishes there were hatred there instead, but it does not pause his hand, and sure enough he feels the give of the parietal bone as his fist lands, like the collapse of a tectonic plate as a world folds in on itself. 

And then there is blood on his hands, far more than he would have guessed, and something that must be grey matter. 

There is something moving in the bottom of his periphery and Spock looks down. The body convulses only slightly, quiet in its death throes. The man is nearly unrecognizable, his face smashed in and an eye hanging out of its socket. But Spock knows those eyes, the wide-eyed blue of his captain, the pupils that were once wide with fear now constricted in death, and he staggers back in horror.

A final breath gurgles out of the mess of blood and bone and Spock can’t even scream, can’t even breathe through the shock and grief and—

he jolts awake, throat constricting in panic and chest heaving. Spock grasps for something warm, something solid, but he is alone in bed; Nyota and he parted ways five point six days ago and his mother has not been there to comfort him for many years now. Shivers wrack his body and soon they turn to sobs.

Vulcans do not dream. Neither do they cry. Spock, however, can still taste iron in the air and the far subtler flavor of grief, and he cannot find it in himself to care.

Dawn breaks over the San Francisco skyline just as Spock finishes his meditation. Even after four hours spent attempting to center himself, his hands shake as he rises and makes himself breakfast.

The last week was spent in the hospital at his captain’s side and only at Doctor McCoy’s insistence did Spock return to his apartment. And now, once there, Spock is desperate to leave, to go to his captain and ascertain his well-being. He would have already done so as soon as he woke, would have broken through the hospital’s security and nerve-pinched anyone who stood in his way, but he still has a modicum of control left and does not wish to relinquish it quite yet.

He sits at the table, not tasting his breakfast nor the Vulcan tea that normally brings him solace. He does not run as he makes his way to the hospital, but neither does he notice the city around him, the destruction caused by Khan and the laughter of the people still alive and relieved to be so. He passes the familiar faces at the nurses desk and does not remember to greet them. Only once he finds the captain’s door and enters to see a still form on the bed does he allow himself to relax.

His captain is pale, but even from the door Spock can see his chest move and hear the dogged beeping of the monitors. He pauses, for a moment not daring to move closer as his dream replays itself in his mind. The smell of blood clings to his nostrils. Enters his mouth.

“You weren’t gone very long.” 

Spock does not allow himself to startle at the doctor’s voice, turning instead and nodding at the man he failed to notice in the corner near Jim’s bed.

“My sleep was disrupted and I wished to check on the captain’s status.”

“Yeah, I’ve been having plenty of nightmares myself. Mostly about this idiot here,” the doctor says, gesturing toward Jim’s sleeping form before he returns to his work.

“Vulcans do not dream.” 

McCoy snorts. “They don’t lie either.”

Spock merely raises an eyebrow, unsure how to respond. He approaches the bed, eyes traveling up the prostrate form before resting on the captain’s face.

The cuts and bruises from his ordeal have been healed, the burns treated before they could truly form. He is still far paler than he should be, but everyday Spock thinks that his skin is a new color, one shade closer to healthy pink. He has shrunk some, even just after a week of his comatose state, and Spock’s brain still trips when he sees him, when he notices how small and vulnerable the captain appears tucked into a too-large biobed.

Anxiety still thrums through Spock’s veins and his fingers itch as if to touch. His friend is the wrong color and the wrong shape and Spock cannot see his eyes. It is like standing in his father’s study, staring down at Surak’s teachings and being unable to open them. 

“Stop it.” 

Spock looks up in surprise and meets the doctor’s eyes. 

“I don’t know what you’re thinking about,” McCoy says, “but if it has you pulling a face like that, I know it can’t be good. And the last thing I need in here is a pouty Vulcan.”

Spock immediately schools his expression and raises a sarcastic brow. “Perhaps you require rest, doctor. It seems that you have started to imagine things.”

McCoy rolls his eyes. “Just take a seat and don’t look so depressed.”

Taking note of the doctor’s haggard appearance, Spock nearly objects and insists that McCoy sit instead. He does not, however, feel the inclination to engage in their normal banter beyond a token remark and obligatory eyebrow raise. The words, he knows, provide some sense of normalcy for the both of them, but they feel like mere motions without Jim’s ringing laughter in the tense aftermath.

So he sits and he waits. McCoy similarly seems too fatigued for his normally irascible disposition, and their interactions are limited to the doctor taking heavy steps to Spock’s chair and muttering updates on the captain’s condition. Spock merely nods and does not object when the doctor rests a hand on his shoulder, nor when he gives Spock a look that he might almost call “knowing.”

Sometimes, when the doctor is not there, Spock touches the captain’s skin. He does not breach the surface, does not open the book that lies before him, but he can feel his telepathy hum as if in song.

Jim’s eyes still do not open. 

In Spock’s dreams, he sees them again and again.

Dying is a little bit like falling, he knows that much. And he wishes he could say that coming back to life is like landing, but that implies two feet on the earth and some sense of what’s up and what’s down.

It’s a little, he supposes, like landing in water if a weight were tied around his ankle. Like swimming towards the surface while the weight drags him down, kicking until he can no longer see light and doesn’t know which way is up, and finally screaming when he runs out of air. It’s like waiting a million years for the seas to change and the continents to drift until finally his bones come ashore.

So, really, it’s not like landing at all. 

The first time he breaches the surface, eyes fluttering and unfocused, there’s someone above him. They’re speaking words he doesn’t understand and if his thoughts could coalesce into something coherent, he might be afraid. 

He doesn’t remember falling back asleep, nor does he know how much time has passed, but he opens his eyes and now there are two figures. They lean towards him and he smiles for a reason he can’t quite grasp, and one begins to ask him questions. _Can you blink for me?_ _Can you follow my finger?_ _Can you squeeze my hand? What’s your name?_ and when he doesn’t have an answer _Is your name Jim Kirk?_

Jim smiles and nods. He thinks he knows these people, the man wearing a frown and a white uniform and the man in grey with pointed ears. They talk to him and touch him, though the grey one touches less, and Jim can’t help but keep smiling at them.

Time passes, he’s pretty sure, because sometimes he blinks and a new face is there. Some are strange but many are familiar; he answers their questions with a whisper, and when they smile he smiles back. 

The waves release him again some time later, and now the room is dark except for the soft glow of a lamp. The man in grey sits next to him, his eyes closed, head propped up by an arm, mouth slightly agape as soft breaths leave him. Jim tries to remember his name, but his thoughts feel like running water, too fast and wayward for him to grasp. So he rests and watches until his eyelids become too heavy to keep open.

The nightmares begin that night, and in the morning the grey one— _Spock_ , he realizes in a rush of clarity—is gone.

The flowers come not long after that.

San Francisco is in one of its dreary moods as Spock walks rapidly from the hospital. He breathes deeply—he may dislike the rain, but the sharp, earthy smell helps clear his mind—and hurries to reach the shipyard before another cloud bursts.

A hovercar speeds by, its velocity disturbing the surrounding puddles just enough to soak Spock’s uniform; in the same moment, his communicator chirps happily in his pocket. He ignores it, certain it will be the doctor, likely irate and speaking at several decibels too many for Spock’s sensitive ears.

“Where the hell do you think you’re going?” McCoy had shouted, all but accosting Spock as he reached the hospital lobby. 

“I have duties to attend to, Doctor. Duties I have neglected in the past four point two weeks,” Spock replied evenly, never faltering in his rapid stride.

“He’s—will you just hold still for a second?—Jim’s asking for you. First coherent thing he’s said since he woke up and he wants to know where you are.” McCoy shakes his head in a way that Spock might describe as affectionate and gestures towards the lift.

“Please give my apologies to the captain,” Spock says, keeping his eyes focused on a point over the doctor’s shoulder. His eyes land on the command for the lift, and Spock blinks as it lights up. “Engineer Scott has requested my immediate presence at the construction site.”

McCoy frowns as if he doesn’t quite comprehend Spock’s words, then taps his foot in impatience. “Scotty will understand. Just tell him that Jim needs you right now.”

“The captain does not need me.” Spock wills himself to look away from the lift and straight into the doctor’s eyes. “He requires the aid of a medical professional such as yourself. In fact, I must ask why you are here conversing with me instead of tending to your patient, especially if he is in as dire need of assistance as you suggest.”

McCoy froze, mouth still open, and it was testimony to the toll the last four weeks had taken on the doctor that he did not break out into a litany of slurs and incomprehensible colloquialisms.

Spock spun on his heel and hurried to the door before the man could regain his power of speech

The communicator chirps again as Spock boards the bus. He reaches down to silence it, allowing his eyes to slide shut as the vehicle hums into motion. He had meditated that morning before his departure from the hospital, but already he can feel fissures in his control, his mind upheaving in unrest. 

It had taken two point one weeks for Jim to open his eyes. Two point one weeks of waiting, of worrying, of Spock fortifying his walls with the frantic knowledge that they were built along fault lines anyways, that Jim could still die and everything, every last control, could be razed to the ground, and Spock would be desolate and alone again, just as he had been outside the radiation chamber.

And then Jim’s eyes had fluttered open. 

They were unfocused and did not seem to recognize him, and for one horrifying moment Spock thought he was once again dreaming and the blood would be forthcoming. But then Jim blinked and Spock saw the blue of his eyes and the pupils blown wide in confusion, not constricted in death.

Spock smiled gently, though Jim did not seem to notice.

“This is normal,” McCoy had explained. “No one comes out of a coma feeling just fine and dandy. The radiation took a huge toll on his body, and then there’s the whole Lazarus act to be taken into account. We really have no idea what affect dying and being revived will have on him.”

The doctor paused, running a hand down his face. “He’s responding to commands, and that’s the most we can ask for right now.”

Spock had nodded, not allowing the worry to show on his face.

When Jim wakes, it is for only short periods, but Spock is always there to greet him. He holds Jim’s hand, does so even in front of the doctor, and Jim smiles up at him and squeezes back.

Spock’s dreams remain, but they do not visit him every night as they used to. Jim’s eyes are open now, even if they do not recognize him.

The doctor begins to allow visitors six point two days after the captain first wakes. When Spock questions him, McCoy explains that the additional stimuli should help the brain’s recovery. Jim does not seem to know his crew anymore than he knows Spock, but his eyes focus and he watches them in something like bemusement. They ask him questions, and sometimes he answers with whispered words that make little sense and a quirk of his lips.

Sometimes, Spock hears him whisper about sunflowers and bluebells and can only wonder at the meaning.

When Nyota visits, her lips thin in concern and she sends Spock a questioning look. The doctor explains, just as he has to every other crew member, that Jim’s progress has been a little slow but well within the realm of normal for someone recovering from a coma.

“Don’t worry,” he says, his arm resting on her shoulder. “He’ll be back to his annoying self in no time.”

She had nodded and squeezed Spock’s arm on her way out the door, her eyes lingering on the captain. 

Nearly a week passed in this way, with crew members coming to visit and Jim smiling and the doctor reassuring everyone that the captain’s recovery would simply take some time.

And then there was last night. Spock, exhausted apparently from his weeks as sentry, fell asleep in the visitor’s chair; if the captain woke during the night he was not aware of it. 

A sound startled him, soft and almost not there, but enough to wake Spock. He had left the lamp on, and it filled the dark room with a soft blow. Though the sky remained dark, the birds had already awoken and could be heard even through the closed window; soon, Spock knew, the sun would begin to rise.

The room was silent except for the birdsong and Spock began to wonder if it was a dream that had woken him until the sound came again: a soft and plaintive whine.

Spock looked toward his captain and froze. Jim seemed to struggle in his sleep, his chest heaving, and his face twisted in fear. So far, the captain’s sleep had been undisturbed by bad dreams, and Spock hesitated, unsure how to proceed now that the problem had arisen. 

Another whine filled the room, this one louder, and Spock laid a hand on the captain’s brow, stroking back his sweat-slick hair. 

“It is alright, Jim,” Spock whispered. “I am here. You are safe.”

The words had no effect, and the whine strengthened until it was nearly a scream, shrill and drawn out, and it wrapped around Spock’s throat until he couldn’t breathe. 

Spock forced his lungs to work, inhaling deeply, and placed two fingers at Jim’s temple. He could project calm; it was a simple trick, simpler even than waking the captain. Wiser also, as he still required rest. 

Spock inhaled, gathering his wits and control, and exhaled, pushing waves of calm into Jim’s mind. He inhaled and exhaled and Jim’s movements began to slow and his brow unfurrowed.

Another inhale and another exhale, and Jim’s face went slack with the calm nothingness of sleep. Spock could feel his hands shake slightly and he did not wish to see the tremble when he removed his fingers from Jim’s face, so he kept them in place.

Another inhale and another exhale, and Spock could feel his mind trip a little—like when he misses a stair and his foot lands a little too hard.

Another inhale and another exhale, and Spock can’t quite get his foot out.

Another inhale and a slip—

and a _click_.

Spock’s eyes fly open in surprise and he looks down at his captain, still calm and sleeping before him. He thinks for a moment that he imagined it, but no. There is something in his mind that wasn’t there before, something that has locked into place.

He does not allow himself to feel alarm as he removes his hand from Jim’s face and steps away from the bed. Carefully, he studies this new thing in his head, and it’s a little strange how the sun dawns on San Francisco in the same moment that horror dawns on him.

It is a link. A rudimentary bond. And already it clings to his mind, like the climbing vines that grew on his childhood home, the roots part of the brick and dirt, and all of it amounting to a gross invasion of his captain’s privacy.

He _tugs_ and winces as the vines cling tighter.

A nurse enters the room for his morning round and Spock is already making his way out the door. He lets out an “oh!” of surprise, but Spock pays him no mind.

The hospital has suddenly awoken, families gathered to visit their loved ones, medical personnel milling about, patients pushed in wheelchairs as the lifts slide open. Spock pushes through them; he knows Dr. McCoy will arrive soon and he cannot bear to face him.

He finds an empty stairwell finally and sits on the top step, face buried in his hands. It is not the standard meditation pose, but he can hardly care in that moment. 

Shame wracks him, bitter and reminding him of the dreams that have plagued him for weeks. Spock has hurt his captain, betrayed his trust, entangled his mind and katra in ways that even Spock does not yet understand.

He has committed a grave transgression and Jim will be the one to pay for it.

Spock stays there until the tremors stop and some control returns to his mind. The stairs take him down to the lobby and Spock nearly makes his escape unnoticed, but McCoy finds him just as he heads toward the exit. 

He does what is necessary and leaves the doctor standing there in shock. No doubt, fury will follow soon after.

The bus rounds a sharp corner, disrupting Spock’s meditations, though his eyes remain closed. 

He cannot simply rebuild his walls. The vines will grow upon those too and will be none the weaker. If he wishes to spare Jim, he must deprive them of sun and air, build a box around them and leave them to choke in the dark. He must exile himself if necessary, salt the earth and make sure nothing grows there ever again.

And no matter what, he must not allow himself to hurt Jim.

Jim wakes with a gasp, his eyes searching the morning-lit room. 

There had been someone there. Someone standing by the window, tall and face darkened by shadow. Jim closes his eyes and can see him again, the soft glow of the biomonitor that illuminates the curve of a cheekbone. The white of teeth as a mouth opens, silent even as the lips move, and then a curve that turns into a smile. It’s Khan, Jim thinks, as the figure moves closer. Khan come back to finish what he started.

Jim opens his eyes and there’s someone else there leaning over him.

“Fuck, Bones!” he shouts. “Give a guy a warning next time!”

His friend rolls his eyes as he lowers the tricorder. “I did, idiot. I even said your name. You were just too out of it to notice.”

“Oh,” Jim says and smiles sweetly. “Then let’s just forget about the shouting.”

“Uh-huh. So is it safe to assume you had more nightmares last night?”

“Maybe,” Jim says, shrugging.

“Wanna talk about it?”

“Not really.” A hand lands on Jim’s shoulder and he looks up into his friend’s face.

“You know you can tell me anything, right?”

“Yeah, I know. Thank you.” Jim reaches up to rest his hand on his friend’s. “Have you heard from Spock yet?”

“Nope. I’d actually started to like the goddamn elf, and then he picks up and disappears like we don’t even exist. If it weren’t for the crew who’ve seen him lurking around the shipyard, I’d almost be worried. Lord knows what he thinks is so important over there.”

Jim nods and listens as his friend rants. It had been two—no, three—days since the nightmares had started. Since Jim’s thoughts had coalesced into something solid enough to hold onto and he could remember his friends’ names. Three days since Spock had stopped visiting him. 

Something tickles the back of Jim’s throat and he coughs softly. 

Bones pauses long enough in his tirade to give him a look. “Don’t cough. I called Scotty before I came in, seeing how our favorite Tolkien/Asimov love child won’t answer his comm. Said he hadn’t even seen him. Just kept hearing about him prowling around scaring ensigns.” 

_Three days_. That wasn’t that much time, was it? Three days and Jim still couldn’t get out of bed, still couldn’t keep his eyes open for more than a few minutes. Three days and his head still spun and his body still hurt enough to make his lungs seize. 

Jim coughed into his arm as the tingling came back, though Bones didn’t seem to notice. Three days was nothing. It—it didn’t mean he’d messed up. It didn’t mean he’d done something unforgivable in between dying and coming back, something he either didn’t remember or didn’t understand.

It didn’t mean Spock was angry at him. 

The biomoniter beeps as Jim’s heart rate spikes, but Bones just keeps talking.

“And then I called the admiralty. Of course, it’s a circus over there. All I learned is that the head receptionist performed the equivalent of a coup and is basically running the place, and that they don’t know where Spock is.”

It didn’t mean Spock knew. As long as Jim didn’t say something stupid in those two weeks of vague fog and shapes, there was no way Spock could know.

Jim wants to vomit, but there’s something in his throat, something clawing its way upwards.

“Bones—”

“Finally Uhura picks up and she says they’re not together anymore. Says they haven’t been for a few weeks now. So i ask her what she’s heard and—”

“ _Bones_!” Jim can barely get the word out around the thing in his throat, and it turns into a strangled cry as his friend turns to look at him.

“Fuck, Jim,” he says, rushing for the trash can.

Jim opens his mouth, but it’s dirt that comes out, and suddenly he’s heaving into the bin, eyes screwed shut in pain.

Bones rubs a hand between his shoulder blades and whispers something that Jim can’t hear over the gagging. His throat keeps working, spasming around the thing lodged inside, and Jim looks up at his friend with watery eyes. 

Fingers fly to his throat, feeling for the blockage.

“OK, Jimmy. Just lean forward.”

Jim tries, but the room’s spinning too fast, and his entire body trembles uncontrollably. And then Bones is behind him, pushing him forward and hooking his hands beneath Jim’s rib cage.

His fists thrust once. Twice. Three times—a crack resounds through the room as Jim feels a rib give. Four times. Five and—

Dirt falls onto his lap, tangled with roots and the bulbous head of a flower. Jim gasps in shallow breaths, blinking down at the mess. His vision has already begun to tunnel and he closes his eyes, willing himself to stay conscious just a few moments longer.

 _Red and blue_. 

It’s pretty, he thinks, right as the darkness takes him

It’s a small mercy that Jim doesn’t dream this time. 

He wakes just as his evening meal arrives. The nurse hums as she sets the tray next to his bed and Jim wonders if Bones has updated her on his condition because the idea of solid food already has his stomach turning.

“Oh,” she says when she notices him watching. “I’ll fetch Dr. McCoy. He asked to be notified as soon as you woke.”

Jim nods and closes his eyes, listening to her rapid step as she leaves the room. His head feels at once too big and too small and he wonders if Bones will yell at him if he falls back asleep.

“So,” a voice says, and Jim startles only slightly before looking up at his friend. Bones doesn’t look angry, Jim’s relieved to note, but there’s something strange in the way he hesitates before continuing. “You had a few visitors drop by. I had to tell them you weren’t feeling well and to come back tomorrow.”

“Did you tell them I was sorry?” Jim asks, his voice little more than a whisper.

“No. But I’m sure they knew it.” Bones cracks a smile but doesn’t quite look Jim in the eye.

Jim studies him in the fading light. He can see the fatigue in the downward slope of his shoulders, the bags under his eyes, but Bones only ever acts like this when he has bad news. Unless it has to do with the ship or the crew or— _oh_. 

“Did Spock stop by?” Jim asks.

“No, Jim,” he says. “I’m sorry.” And his friend does look sorry, like he’s just delivered Jim’s death sentence or told him his prostate’s been removed. Jim shakes his head.

“Bones, It’s fine.” Jim winces at the soreness in his throat. “You know I’ve dealt with this before. I’m not going to keel over just because he doesn’t want to see me.”

“If I could just get my hands on that goddamn oversized elf on a shelf and knock some sense into him—”

“Bones, really. You know it wouldn’t make a difference. He can’t help it if he doesn’t love me. No more than I can help it that I l-love him.” Jim’s proud that he only stutters a little.

“I’m not sure that’s how this works,” his friend says. “We never really pursued this back at the Academy because you were so obstinate, but I was in the lab running some tests on your Vulcan flower. I found traces of cortisol in the roots, a stress hormone. It’s possible the disease feeds off your body’s reaction to events and not the psychic connection, at least not exclusively.”

Jim closes his eyes and thinks of Winona, Sam, Luis, Uhura....Spock. He thinks of the sunflowers in his garden and the bluebells that Sam used to weave into Jackie’s hair. He thinks of the spots of blood when he spat them out.

“It’s possible,” he admits. “When I was a kid—when she left, it didn’t make much of a difference to me. Whether the flowers were there because she didn’t love me or because it hurt.”

Jim feels the bed dip under his friend’s weight but doesn’t open his eyes.

“We’ll figure it out. And I can talk to Spock, see what’s got his panties in a bunch. If it turns out this thing is hormonal, his presence might help in the long run.”

“You’re not going to tell him, are you?”

“That he’s a lousy friend and I’d like to kick his ass all the way to Delta Vega? Yeah, I’m gonna tell him.”

Jim laughs, blinking the tears from his eyes. “You know what i mean.”

“Yeah, I do. And don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone about your school girl crush.”

“Thanks,” Jim says, watching his friend rise from the bed. He glances at the tray left by the nurse. “Did you really expect me to eat that?”

“No, I ordered that for myself. I’ve been in the labs all day and I’m starving.” Bones picks up the food—salad, Jim realizes with a wave of nausea—and sits next to the bed. “I learned a lot about Vulcan botany today. Turns out their flora is just as unpleasant as their fauna.”

“And by fauna you mean…?”

“I mean Spock.”

Jim laughs.

“Hey, just be glad you aren’t coughing up cacti. Or Shi’Kahr snapdragons. They had poisonous fangs and were known for preying on wild sehlats and small children. Botanists called them the le-matya of the plant world.”

Jim laughs again. He’s just this side of hysterical and his throat hurts, but this is the best he’s felt in days, ever since the nightmares had started and ever since Spock left.

Bones treats his throat and eventually Jim’s stomach stops turning. He sips a protein shake, enjoying the feel of the cold liquid against his sore throat, wondering if Bones slipped him something or if sleep is just an insistent visitor, knocking on his skull and pulling him downward.

The dreams return, of course. The same figure stands in Jim’s room, slipping through the shadows, growing as he pleases. In one moment it’s Khan’s face looking down at him; in another, it’s Frank and then Kodos. And then something changes, and this is the one that wakes Jim up screaming, because the Weeping Man is there and when he opens his mouth to speak, it’s blood that comes out, red blood and blue leaves and a sound like the inside of a warp engine.

Jim doesn’t take visitors the next day either. He’s too rattled and his throat is sore again, this time from screaming. 

Bones doesn’t offer any information about Spock, and Jim, too exhausted to be brave, doesn’t ask.

It’s two days later that Uhura bursts into his room, hair whipping around her, eyes alight, and says, “I demanded they let me see you.”

Bones startles from his place next to Jim’s bed and glowers at her. “It’s not like anyone was stopping you.”

She ignores him and walks towards Jim. “We thought McCoy had finally snapped and gotten rid of you. I came to make sure you’re still alive.”

“We?” Jim says, laughing at Bones’ look of disapproval.

“Sulu, Chekov, and I. And Gaila. She’d be the one breaking in here right now if she didn’t have a meeting to go to.”

“You didn’t break in anywhere,” Bones says, still scowling. “I sent out a message this morning saying he was receiving visitors again.”

Uhura dismisses him with a wave of her hand and turns back to Jim. “So I see you’re still among the living. how are you feeling?”

Jim shrugs. “Like I haven’t showered in a month and I have a catheter in my dick.” 

“You sure are a sweet talker.”

“I get it from Bones,” Jim says, grinning.

“That’s it, I’m leaving,” Bones grumbles, already on his way out the door. “Just don’t wear him out.”

“Bye, Leonard!” Uhura says brightly before turning back to Jim. “So he called me the other day trying to get ahold of Spock.”

Jim nods. “I think he was worried about him. Sounds like they actually started getting along for a while there. It’s too bad I was asleep at the time.”

“That’s the only reason?” she asks, and Jim ignores the pointed tone.

“Think so. I doubt he wanted to invite him out for drinks.”

“You’re funny. You know that Spock and I broke up about a month ago?”

“Bones mentioned it,” Jim says as he studies the veins in his hand. He feels the faintest tickle in the back of his throat and wonders if there’s a flower growing with each beat of his heart and pump of his blood. The first twil’la had come out a few months before Nibiru after Jim had spotted Uhura and Spock on the observatory deck one night. He’d been leaving, had only come there for a few minutes of quiet after a long shift, when he glimpsed them through the one of the windows that partitioned the deck, Uhura’s head on Spock’s shoulder and their hands intertwined.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers.

“Jim,” Uhura says and he looks into her eyes. “It’s OK.”

Nodding, he gives her a smile and hopes it looks sincere. It would almost be better, he thinks, to still like her—to maybe even to love her. She may not love him back, but the roses never hurt as much as this ache in his chest.

“How’ve you been?” he asks.

“Good,” she says, shrugging. “The admiralty’s been keeping us busy. It’s just one debriefing after another. I’m a little surprised they haven’t started hounding you yet.”

“I think Bones has been scaring them away.”

She laughs. “We keep calling you a hero, you know. I figured it could go one of two ways: either they use you as their scapegoat or they hail you as two-time savior of Earth. Who knew Checkov’s hero worship would ever come in so handy?”

“I—y-you didn’t have to do that,” Jim says as panic surges through him. “I made stupid mistake after stupid mistake. Spock kept trying to tell me there was something wrong about that mission and I didn’t listen. Hell, even Scotty knew. Pike was right, I’m not ready for this. And now he’s gone and so many others and—”

“Jim, fuck,” she says, reaching out to grip his hand. “Calm down or I’ll have to call Leonard back in here.”

He nods and squeezes his eyes shut. “Sorry. I’m sorry.”

“It’s alright, Jim. Just take deep breaths.” Uhura squeezes his hand and damn, he’s greedy enough that he wishes she’d hug him instead. Wishes she’d hold him until he stops shaking and he falls back in love with her and he can give her roses every single day.

But she stays, at least. Her hold never wavers and the trembles leave his body and finally he can breathe again.

“You don’t have to mention this to Bones,” he says finally. “He’s going to notice the spike in my bioreadings anyway.”

“Yeah?” she chuckles. “That’s good because I didn’t want to track him down.”

“Just....” He takes a deep breath “Just talk to me about something that’s not Starfleet or the other s word.”

“Alright,” she says. “There was actually something I wanted to ask you. Or I guess not ask you, but tell you.”

“What is it?”

“I’m not _asking_ you because it’s not like I need your permission. But I know you and Gaila dated for a while, and I’d say we’re friends, I even let you use my first name. Not that I adhere to some kind of archaic ‘bro code’ because I’m not an idiot. But I thought I should let you know.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you nervous before,” Jim says, laughing.

“I’m not nervous. I’m just trying to tell you that Gaila and I started dating.”

Jim grins so wide he thinks his face will split. “Congratulations.”

“Thank you. Gaila’s been telling everyone she talks to, and I do mean that literally. She messaged me during her meeting to tell me Captain Georgiou gives her congratulations. I just wanted you to hear it from me first.”

“She was crazy about you at the Academy, you know. Of course, you were with Spock already and she was still trying to figure out human relationships.”

“Wait, you knew I was with Spock back then?”

“Obviously,” Jim says, rolling his eyes. “Remember when you dragged him along to the hospital? You made him go to the cafeteria to get you _salad_. Everything about it screamed boyfriend.”

“Oh. I guess I thought you were too dumb to notice.”

“Yeah,” Jim laughs. “I could tell.”

Uhura grins, wide and toothy, and for a moment Jim forgets about Spock and flowers, because at least he still has this. He still has Bones and Uhura and anyone else still willing to follow his ass into space.

“Hey, Nyota,” he starts, “I also have something to tell you.”

“Yeah?” she says, her smile flagging as she takes note of his solemn expression.

“The, uh, the doctors said that I may never…” He pauses to take a fortifying breath and looks her straight in the eye. “They said I may never fuck again.” 

Her mouth falls open and Jim thinks it might be the first time he’s ever seen her speechless.

“But I’m going to prove them wrong. Whatever it takes, however long it takes, I promise you this. I’m going to fuck again.”

She continues to stare, her mouth forming around words until she finally bursts into laughter.

“I fucking _hate_ you!” she cries, smacking him on the back of the head. “You’ve just lost first name privileges.”

It’s then that Bones walks back into the room. It takes only a moment of surveying the scene—Uhura falling out of her chair in hysterics and Jim rubbing the back of his head—for him to decide it’s not worth his time, and he turns around and leaves.

The others arrive soon after. Scotty bursts in rambling about ship schematics. Chekov stutters something about non-slip socks and how his grandma always complains about the hospital variety not being thick enough before handing him a purple knitted mess. Sulu brings his fiance in right after Bones administers a sedative and Jim only barely keeps his eyes open long enough to shake the man’s hand.

Gaila makes a grand entrance with a song about eating pussy that makes Bones’ ears turn red.

Others show up too. Jim may have committed his crew’s names to memory, but he doesn’t recognize half these people, not with the pain meds pumping through him and his brain still foggy from the coma. He wishes they wouldn’t look at him like he’s a hero, not when there are so many who will never visit, so many he wanted to give his life for but was too late.

The nightmares stay. Again and again, the shadow figure comes to visit, and every night he seems to get a little closer.

The flowers stay too. The attacks often come after Jim wakes up gasping from a nightmare and finds himself searching for someone to hold onto.

Spock doesn’t come at all

❀

Jim had been captain for three months and one day when Starfleet rang and directed the _Enterprise_ from its current mission to the small and quiet colony of Janus III.

“Quiet” because it was inhabited by a few hundred botanists and farmers. “Quiet,” too, because all communication coming from the planet had abruptly stopped in the middle of the Terran night and, even a week later, had yet to be restored.

“We’re to report on the colony’s status,” Uhura announces when the transmission comes through, her hand to her earpiece and her mouth a thin line. “Determine the reason for the halt in communications and help restore if possible.”

Jim doesn’t even blink as he swivels in his chair to face his helmsman. “Warp factor six, Mr. Sulu.”

“Aye, sir.”

It takes twenty hours and sixteen minutes for the _Enterprise_ to enter orbit around Janus III. Jim pulls a double despite Spock’s protests, and the lights of the bridge feel too bright, the rhythms of the ship strange, like a heart that’s just started to murmur, as he orders Uhura to hail the colony.

“Captain.” The governor of the colony grins at him through the view screen, his skin slightly green in the dark shadows of his office and transmission’s degraded pixels. “What a pleasant surprise. We were not expecting a visit from Starfleet for another month at least, much less from the flagship.”

Jim grins in turn, though it feels like his lips are pulled by puppet strings, twisting as they’re tugged upward. “I apologize for the short notice, Governor. We were under the impression you might need some help with your communications network.”

“Aw, yes,” the governor—Ridgway, Uhura had said his name was—purrs. “We had an electrical storm knock out a few towers about a week ago. It should all be up and running again within the month.”

“We’d be happy to help,” Jim says, glancing at Uhura as the image degrades. She fiddles with a knob at her station, but the visual noise only increases. “With the assistance of our engineering team, it should only take a few days.”

“Excellent!” the man exclaims, now little more than a mess of pixels and color, though Jim can hear a clap as his hands come together. “And please, we extend an invitation to your entire crew. Janus III is a beautiful planet and one that should be of particular interest to your ship’s botanists.”

Bones suggests later that day that Jim put in a request for shore leave—”These kids have barely graduated and Starfleet has them doing jobs that normally require five years of experience. One day I’m prescribing them acne medication and the next they come in asking for anxiety pills!”—but Jim just shakes his head. They’ve only been out here a month and, however hard his crew might work, they’re young and untested and he can’t have the admiralty thinking they came all this way just to play hooky. 

“We’ll make it an unofficial leave,” Jim says after a moment of thought. “I’ll submit a report about the planet’s unprecedented botanical discoveries and how we need every available hand helping the lab collect samples. If Lieutenant Summers decides that his department’s overstaffed and releases his team to attend to other, more leisurely activities, I’ll just have to sign off on it.”

Bones, never one to approve of subterfuge, rolls his eyes, but he agrees to the plan in the end.

Jim intends to spend his own botany shift on the bridge flirting with Uhura—he was proud to say that he could do so now with nary a thought about roses—and coordinating repairs with Scotty. He’s about to head up when Spock approaches him in the mess, a frown tugging at his lips and a padd tucked under his arm.

“Captain,” the Vulcan says and Jim can’t help but smile at the look on his face, the mild consternation verging on outright chagrin. “I must ask why I, as the ship’s science officer, have not been informed of the botanical discoveries described in your report. Surely my expertise would be invaluable to the collection and testing of samples, and yet you seem to have spoken directly to Lieutenant Summers, my inferior, rather than discussing the matter with me.”

“Oh,” Jim says, realizing Spock’s expression is maybe less chagrined and more affronted. “I’m sorry, Spock. I didn’t want—look, will you walk with me to the bridge? I’ll explain on the way.”

“I believe that is an acceptable use of my time,” Spock sniffs. Jim refrains from grinning and gestures for Spock to lead the way.

“The details of the report are fudged,” he explains as they enter the hall. “The crew’s burnt out after these last few months and I wanted to give them a break without getting Starfleet on my ass. The easiest way was to assign them all plant duty.”

Spock frowns, pausing right before the lift. “I am not certain I understand. You fabricated a report—an offense, I should mention, that could lead to a court martial—describing unique alien flora simply to garner a few hours of leisure for the crew?”

“Yeah,” Jim sighs, glancing around the hall as he ushers Spock into the lift.

“And there are no unprecedented botanical discoveries?”

“No, Spock.” 

The Vulcan seems to wilt a little at the words, his shoulders sagging the barest of an inch and his eyes cast downward.

“I will report you.”

“Alright,” Jim says as he rubs the bridge of his nose. “At least this captain thing was fun while it lasted.”

Spock still stares at the ground, his mouth a moue of disappointment

“I’ll tell you what, Spock,” Jim says because he’s an idiot and because he actually can’t stand to see that look on his first officer’s face. “I was gonna head to the bridge, but I’m technically supposed to be on flower duty right now. How about we go down there together and maybe we’ll make the botanical discovery of the century and my report won’t be a lie. Then you won’t have to report me and you’ll have some fascinating flowers to keep you happy.”

Spock regards him from the other side of the lift, one eyebrow rising in a slow incline. “I believe you are attempting to humor me.”

“Yep,” Jim says, grinning. “And I’m trying to save my ass. Plus, who knows? We might actually find something cool.”

The planet, when they beam down, looks starkly barren for what’s supposed to be an agricultural colony, and it immediately sets Jim’s heart to pounding.

Red fills the sky and Jim glances at his first officer, wondering if the color reminds Spock of his home planet or if it brings to mind for him the same thing it does for Jim: a sky alight with flame and ash.

“Where’s everyone else?” Jim wonders aloud as he peers around the empty hills. 

Spock pulls out his tricorder and frowns. “I am not detecting any life signs in our immediate surroundings.”

The Vulcan starts walking, but Jim’s arm shoots out to stop him. “Call for a security team. And keep your phaser at the ready.”

Spock nods as he complies, pulling out his communicator. 

“There is no signal, Captain.”

“Great,” Jim mutters. He casts his eyes around the area, but there’s little to see beyond the red sky, barren earth, and mountains rising up ahead. “The communications towers. They were in the mountains, right?”

“That is correct, Captain.”

“How likely do you think it is that our botany teams decided to drop in on Scotty and his grease monkeys?”

“Not very. It does, however, appear to be the best place to start our investigation.”

Nodding, Jim steps forward and gestures for Spock to follow. The Vulcan obeys and falls close behind, taking up Jim’s left side.

It was a little odd at first how Spock unfailingly flanked him. And always on his left side too. It had made Jim nervous, especially during those first few weeks when he still wasn’t sure if Spock hated him, if he was leaning over his shoulder only to point out how line two of his daily report failed to follow MSA formatting. If Spock was only there, silent and eyebrows raised in perpetual judgment, just to watch Jim fail. 

He asked him about it finally after a tense diplomatic mission during which Jim had nearly lost the mining rights to the Ailalans’ third moon. Spock had stood a hair’s breadth away from Jim as they transported back to the ship, and followed just as close as Jim left the room for the lift.

“Spock,” Jim had snapped the moment the turbolift doors closed. “No offense, but I thought Vulcans didn’t like touching people.”

Spock stared at him, one eyebrow inching slowly higher. “I am not touching you.”

“No,” Jim sighed, “I mean that you always insist on personal space. And I do my best to respect it, but then half the time you’re leaning over my shoulder and I’m not sure if I should be offended or not because you can’t trust me to do my job.”

“Ah,” Spock said and the eyebrow fell. The look he gave Jim then was blank and a little guarded, almost as if his first officer were embarrassed. “It is a Vulcan tradition, though I have also read of something similar in ancient military practices on Earth. It seems to be a constant across our two species that individuals favor their right hand.”

Jim nods impatiently, wondering where this impromptu lecture could possibly be heading.

“This means that warriors—or, more likely, soldiers in your history—carry weapons on the right side of their body. Which in turn leaves them more vulnerable to attacks on their left. It is therefore tradition for officers to flank their superiors on the left side with the intention of protecting them where they are most vulnerable.”

Jim had stared a moment longer than was polite for letting out an intelligent “Oh.”

“Indeed,” Spock said, and Jim thought he saw the slightest hint of color on his cheeks. 

Now, on this godforsaken rock, Jim is glad for the presence by his side. For the way Spock walks in step with him and the way this crimson world feels less like a deathtrap and more like an adventure with the Vulcan by his side.

“Captain—” Spock starts, though a little too late. Jim’s foot catches on something and then he’s tumbling to the ground with a hard thud.

“Fuck,” Jim spits. _So much for my left-hand man._

He turns to see what tripped him and pauses when he spots a plant—a weed, probably; it looks like a shoot of crabgrass—and something else sticking from the earth, something a little like—

“Are those _fingers_ ?” Jim says, scrambling to his feet before Spock can assist him. He freezes as he approaches because _fuck_ , they are fingers. A set of five, covered in dirt and a childish size, curled in on themselves like a wilted plant.

And they’re moving.

Jim gasps involuntarily and doesn’t even have time to be embarrassed before he’s digging and reaching to grasp the hand. He runs his thumb across the knuckles in a way that he hopes is comforting.

“Captain,” Spock says as he hovers above him, “I am not sure that is the wisest course of action. Allow me to run a tricorder reading before we begin the process of disinterment.”

“Are you fucking kidding me, Spock?” Jim growls, still digging with his free hand. The earth is dry and undisturbed and it won’t take long before his nails start to bleed. “There’s someone _down here_.”

Spock doesn’t respond, simply pulls out his tricorder. Jim’s in the middle of sending him a glare when he feels the fingers tug on his hand and he glances back down.

They tug again. And then they _pull._

“Fuck!” Jim cries as his forearm disappears into the earth. He can hear the tricorder clatter to the ground as Spock grabs his shoulders, the Vulcan’s grip already painfully tight as he tries to yank Jim back up.

The fingers, vice-like around Jim’s hand, pull again, and Jim’s face slams into the ground as his entire arm sinks below.

He grunts in pain, blinking the dirt from his eyes. He’s going to lose his arm in a second, can already feel the joints strain and his shoulder tries to dislocate as Spock wraps his arms around Jim’s torso. The Vulcan’s face is stonier than the mountains, his brow furrowed in concentration, and Jim glances back down toward the earth, wondering which of the two is more immovable.

That’s when he notices the plant—the crabgrass he had tripped over earlier—and the way it’s receding into the ground, moving in rhythm with the fingers pulling him down.

“Spock,” Jim gasps, his eyes screwed tight against the pain, “pull at the plant.”

The Vulcan pauses and Jim supposes he really must be an empath because he can feel the confusion emanating off his friend. 

“Captain?” he says uncertainly.

“Just do it, Spock!” Something inside him gives and Jim screams as he feels his shoulder dislocate, his legs kicking wildly and finding only rock and earth to connect to. 

And the thing just keeps pulling.

Spock’s hands fly to the plant and wrap around the base. He pauses just a moment before his muscles bunch and his legs brace and he puts all his Vulcan strength into one, huge pull.

And that’s when the screaming really starts.

The thing comes out, its hands balled into fists and face twisted in fury as it lets out a high-pitched wail. Dirt and blood fall from the squirming body, and it’s like a newborn risen from the earth, no larger than an infant despite its strength.

Spock stares in shock, hands still gripping its grassy head. Its eyes open and—and they’re blue. Bright and wide and it’s Jim’s eyes looking back at him and it takes only a moment for him to realize what he has to do.

The mouth opens again and something black and downy starts to come out, something that looks like spores, but by then Jim’s already raising his phaser. His right arm is still mangled and deep in the earth, so he uses his left to switch the setting to kill and pull the trigger.

The wailing stops. As does the flailing, though the body still spasms, the thin skin ruptured by the close-proximity blast, leaking blood and dirt onto Spock’s uniform.

And Spock just stands there, mouth agape as he blinks at the dead thing in his hands.

“Spock,” Jim calls, his voice hoarse. A wave of pain hits him and he can feel his eyeballs as they try to roll back into his skull and the darkness as it tries to tug him down. “Help me out of here.”

His friend nods and lays the still-moving body onto the ground, glancing at it occasionally as he helps Jim extricate his arm from the dirt.

“It was going to kill us, Spock,” Jim says as he leans back against a rock and Spock uses his torn sleeve to create a sling. “It looked like me. I think—I think it was supposed to replace me.”

Spock nods, but he keeps his eyes carefully trained on his work, refusing to meet Jim’s gaze.

“It does appear to be poisonous,” he says once Jim has stumbled to his feet and he’s run a scan. “I would like to take tissue samples in order to run further tests.”

“There’s no time,” Jim says, pulling at Spock’s sleeve with his good arm. He glances toward the mountains and the darkening sky. “Our team’s still out there.”

Jim starts out at a sprint, ignoring the pain and the encroaching cold. Spock follows close after and glances behind them occasionally, as if expecting the creature to still be there, growing as they become distant.

It doesn’t take long for more fingers to appear, some wriggling and some bright with blood, and they have to step carefully so as not to trip. They’re quiet too, and all Jim can hear is the sound of fingers brushing against each other and his own harsh breaths.

The moon has already begun its ascent, helping to guide them in the darkly crimson night, when the hands suddenly stop. Jim halts as they do, and Spock pauses next to him, one hand still on Jim’s elbow, about to assist him up the stony path.

It’s still, the hands silent in their sudden repose. Jim hazards a glance toward Spock and it’s when their eyes meet that the earth upheaves.

Dirt shoots skyward and screams fill the air and then Spock’s all but yanking Jim up the path, flying over the ground as the towers become visible in the distance.

“Fuck, Spock,” Jim gasps as the Vulcan pulls violently at his arm. “Don’t dislocate the other one too.”

Spock glances back and in the next moment Jim’s being swept up into a bridal carry, the Vulcan running all the faster despite the extra weight. Jim can only glare and hold on, gripping tighter as they approach the main tower.

Spock’s already through the gate and into the yard when something bursts through the ground right in front of them. The Vulcan trips and Jim is briefly airborne, the red air whooshing past as he braces himself for the fall. It’s not near enough and his arm twists beneath him, tearing a scream from his lips.

“Captain!” Spock calls. He clambers back up and rushes toward him, grabbing hold in the same moment that the newly-sprouted creature staggers forward.

It screams in a way that could curdle blood, shrill in the night air and dissonant with the wailing of its fellows. Jim sees the flash of a green iris as it rushes at them, blood and mud dripping from its stubby limbs.

This creature is larger than the one that had grabbed him earlier, but its features are round and imprecise, like the vaguest idea of a human, and its legs twist strangely as if it’s still grappling with the concept of bones.

Jim stills as it vaults toward them. He glances at Spock, who has his phaser drawn, who points it with unfailing aim. Who is still and pale and whose eyes are black with fear. 

And so Jim acts because he has to. Because he doesn’t want to know what these things will do to them, what he suspects they already did to the colonists, what they may well be doing to his crew right now.

He pulls the phaser from Spock and starts shooting. 

This time, the wailing doesn’t stop as they die. This time, it grows. It grows as the dying let out their death rattles, grows as the others bear witness, and grows even more in their fury. 

Jim turns back to Spock and sees that the Vulcan has covered his ears, his eyes screw tight in pain, and now it’s Jim pulling him to his feet and propelling them toward the tower.

The door opens and, to Jim’s surprise, it’s Scotty standing there, looking for all the world like he’s just woken from a nap and come to see what all the screaming’s about.

“Lock the door,” Jim gasps as he nearly runs into his Chief Engineer. “Lock the door right fucking now!”

“A-aye, sir,” Scotty sputters, rushing forward. He glances back at Jim and Spock as he begins keying the code. “You two look like you’ve been through Hell n’ back.”

“Scotty,” Jim says, swaying a little on his feet, “Have you been in contact with the ship?”

“Aye. They’ve been throwin’ a wee bit o’ a fuss over the two of you up and disappearing, but I’ve been keepin’ them in the know with repairs.”

“Order your team to evacuate immediately.” Jim turns to Spock, who hasn’t moved and whose eyes are slightly glazed. “We need to get back up there.”

They find the botany teams in a subterranean cave, their bodies strung up with roots. They’re alive still, if only just barely, and Bones spends hours purging the creatures’ poison from their systems. 

Jim thinks they look a little like balloons, or like floating candles on a lake.

The colonists are dead. Have been for at least a week and their bodies hang among the dripping stalactites and the dirty, entangling roots. Their teeth are gone, apparently taken by the creatures who hadn’t yet found a way to imitate bone and had to resort to stealing the real thing.

Jim supervises the rescue for as long as he can, only stopping when his legs start to shake and the world starts to spin and Spock insists on escorting him to sickbay. 

He wakes a few times in the night and Spock is there beside him, keeping vigil but never once looking him in the eye. The Vulcan whispers something that sounds like an apology, but Jim’s too tired to understand.

And when he wakes hours later to Bones frowning down at him and a quick hypo in the neck, Spock is nowhere to be seen.

❀

“So,” Jim says, stretching the sleep from his muscles with a satisfied groan, “when can I get out of here?”

He kicks the covers off the bed and sends his foot flying in Bones’ direction. It’s been two months since he woke up and every part of him is starting to twitch. None of the staff wants to play chess with him and his crew’s finally been granted leave now that the debriefings are done. They all came to say goodbye before they left for their respective destinations and Jim had smiled tightly and wished them a safe trip.

Bones snorts, shoving Jim’s leg down. “You haven’t even started physical therapy yet.”

“Only because you won’t let me.”

“I won’t let you because you’re not ready yet.”

“No, you won’t let me because you’re a mother hen.”

“And in this mother hen’s expert opinion, PT will cause additional stress to your body that may trigger another attack.”

“That’s the line you fed to the admiralty when they came looking for interviews. It’s not going to work on me.”

“It’s not a line,” Bones says, punctuating the sentence with a hypo to Jim’s neck. “It’s the truth. You’re making progress and I don’t want it all undone by a punctured lung because your body decided to grow a bush.”

“Please?” Jim says, practically bouncing on the bed—or as close as he can get while prostrate. “I’ve only coughed up petals the last week, and it’s only when I think about you-know-who. I’m going to be too distracted to worry about him.”

Bones shakes his head. “I’ve been running tests and—”

“And you haven’t learned anything. Only that cortisol seems to fuel the flowers’ growth and that my levels spike when my thoughts turn Spock-ward.”

“ _And_ ,” his friend says, glaring, “that adrenaline helps speed the process up. Which is exactly what your body’s going to be producing once you start PT.”

“C’mon, Bones.” Jim says plaintively. “It’ll give you a chance to fly back to Georgia. You’ve practically lived here the last two months.”

“I'll still be your attending, Jim.”

“You can assign someone else. This is a hospital, they have an entire medical staff. I'm not going to die just because you leave town.”

“I’m not so sure about that,” Bones mutters, keeping his eyes on the tricorder results.

Jim pauses as something that’s not quite a scowl crosses his friend’s face. It’s a little too dark and heavy, and Jim thinks he can see a sheen in his eyes. 

“Bones—” Jim starts, reaching out to grab the doctor’s hand.

“What?” he snaps, his eyes shooting to Jim’s face.

Jim sighs and lowers his hand. “I’m not going to die. You know that, right?”

“Of course I know that, you idiot,” Bones says, blinking rapidly as his frown fades. “Fine. I’ll set you up with a therapist for Friday.”

Jim grins and starts his prostrate bouncing again. “Does that mean you’re leaving?”

“You’re that anxious to get rid of me, huh? No. Frankly, I have no idea how your body’s going to respond to the additional activity, and you’ve made it abundantly clear that you don’t want other people knowing about your flower problem. So I’m staying right here in San Fran.”

“No, c’mon. Just tell them I have panic attacks or something.” Bones scoffs at this but Jim continues, “You haven’t seen Joanna once since we got dirtside. Everyone else has gone back home and you’re stuck here taking care of me.”

“I don’t mind it, Jimbo.”

“But you should!” Jim says a little frantically. He stops bouncing, the bed continuing to shake as he looks up at his friend. “She’s your daughter and you’ve already been here two months. We both know I’m not worth all this trouble.”

“Excuse me?” Bones says, his tone so fierce, so hard, it’s as if the man grows as he says it, and Jim’s next words are barely a whisper.

“She....she knew it. Even back then, she knew I wasn’t worth it. Worth staying for, worth loving. And Spock must have known it too.”

“You know,” Bones says, sitting heavily into the bedside chair. “I just spent the last two months keeping you alive. It’s a little rude to imply a man’s hard labor is worthless.”

“I’m sorry,” Jim whispers.

“Yeah, you should be.” Bones sighs and pulls the chair closer to the bed. “Listen. Children are....Joanna is my sun, earth, and stars. And I know, even if you won’t talk about it, that you never had an adult to love you like that. Which means that it’s my job.”

“OK,” Jim says slowly, still wary of his friend’s thunderous expression. “I don’t know what that means.” 

“It means,” Bones says, leaning toward him and jabbing a finger into Jim’s chest, “that you don’t get to call yourself worthless. It doesn’t matter what your mom thinks or what the flowers in your chest say. Hell, it doesn’t even matter what Spock thinks. Because you’re worth a lot to me and you’re worth a lot to all those people who kept badgering me to let them see you. Just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean you can send me away like your life isn’t worth anything to me. So yes, I will let you start PT. Yes, I will be there to supervise every minute because you’re my best friend and losing you hurt enough the first time. No, I will not change my mind.”

They sit in silence for a minute, Bones’ eyes wild with anger and Jim unable to meet them. He picks at the frayed edge of his blanket and wonders what part of him it is that Bones loves and if it’s even real.

“Thank you,” he says finally.

“You’re welcome. Now, I want to up your caloric intake. You’re gonna need that extra energy come Friday.”

Jim watches as his friend starts to putter around the room, muttering to himself and scowling at unsatisfactory readings. He closes his eyes and imagines he’s back at the Academy, back when love was just roses and he could find a cure for it at the bottom of a bottle. Back when Bones would rub his back as he hunched over the toilet and Jim knew that, no matter what, he would be fine in the morning as long as his friend was there. 

Back when he didn’t have a hole in his chest and flowers that kept rushing to fill it.

Friday arrives and Jim discovers, about half way through his session and after the twentieth _You’re doing so well, Jim!_ , that he really fucking hates physical therapy.

That morning had arrived without any nightmares, and Jim graciously accepted the flavorless oatmeal Bones brought him. He pulled on his non-slip socks from Chekov and only grumbled a little when his friend helped him into the wheelchair. He didn’t even complain when Bones wouldn’t let him push himself.

Dr. Pham had smiled and shook his hand as soon as he arrived. She was, according to Bones, the best physical therapist this side of the Milky Way, and Jim listened as she explained what they’d be doing in the next few weeks, fidgeting as he eyed the equipment, his leg bouncing. 

The entire wheelchair starts to shake and Bones gives him a surreptitious slap to the back of his head.

They start not long after, and that’s when Jim starts to rethink the Copernican model of the solar system because damn, maybe Bones was right.

He's sure he can stand on his own, but Dr. Pham insists on helping, and then it’s just the two bars in front of him, his entire body weight, and two atrophied legs beneath. 

And those legs won’t move. His arms start shaking and he can feel every muscle in him working, but his legs won’t respond to his brain’s commands.

“That's alright, Jim,” Dr. Pham says. “Just keep trying and think about which muscle group you're using. It should start in the glutes and your quads.”

Jim nods and finally his leg starts to rise, his body trembling so hard it feels like he’s having a fit. Another step and another and each one, he’s sure, is harder than the climb to the warp core.

Bones is there when he reaches the end and catches Jim as his legs give out. He sobs into his friend’s shoulders, cries like he hasn’t permitted himself since waking up, since he was in the radiation chamber and every breath hurt. 

And God, he thinks. Maybe it’s best that Spock isn’t here, can’t see him like this, when he’s low and weak and not even dying.

“It’s alright, darling,” his friend murmurs. “It’ll get easier.”

Jim nods hastily and scrubs at his face. He can feel the faintest tickle at the back of his throat, so he stamps down all thoughts of Spock and clings a little harder until Dr. Pham has rolled the wheelchair up behind him.

“You did well, Jim,” Dr. Pham says, squeezing his shoulder. He nods but doesn’t look her in the eye.

He stares at his socks instead and thinks about the grandmothers he saw on Tarsus exchanging knitting patterns. His eyes close and he pretends for a moment that they’re still alive, that he’s still a kid, that he can run and play and walk on his own and he doesn’t know what radiation tastes like.

He pretends, just for a moment, that he lives in a universe where Spock could love him back.

It doesn’t get easier. Not at first at least, and Jim thinks it might actually get harder, depending on the day and what fits his body decides to throw. But Jim refuses to stay in the hospital a moment longer than he has to, so he writes to Chekov asking for more socks, takes every last supplement Dr. Pham recommends, and very pointedly does not think about a certain Vulcan who likes red and blue flowers.

He's eventually allowed to go to the bathroom by himself and somewhere on the hospital bill sent to Starfleet is a _catheter, thrown out window and crushed by passing vehicle below_.

It’s only a few days later that Jim has a particularly bad attack while out in the gardens. It’s anyone’s guess as to why, really; he fell asleep next to the begonias and woke up coughing out twil’la. Bones confines him to bed for the next week and Jim doesn’t even bother to complain. Not when his blood plasma is so severely fucked that his nose won’t stop bleeding and the room spins as if he’s back aboard the Enterprise as she plummeted toward Earth, Jim trying to kick the warp core back into place when he couldn’t even tell up from down.

It happens a few times. Jim will make progress, reach some new milestone, and then the flowers come rushing in and undo weeks of work. There are nights where Jim thinks about breaking out just to find Spock, just to smell his spicy scent and hear the rumble of his voice, just to yell at him for the way his lungs ache and his throat burns and the fear that he’s never, ever going to get out of this hospital.

He never does it, but he does start to break out of his room. Mostly at night and mostly when the nightmares have come knocking. Sometimes he’ll find a place to hide and sleep there until morning when Bones finds and looks down at him with a deep furrow between his brows and an even deeper frown.

It’s on one such night that Jim finds himself in the cafeteria, sipping at lukewarm coffee and pushing broccoli around on his plate. He’s currently gone two weeks without an attack and Jim hopes it holds long enough that Bones will finally release him. He’s sick of undercooked vegetables.

All he has to do is not think about Spock. And so he casts his glance around the room and notices a woman two tables down who seems to be watching him. She’s familiar, definitely someone he’s worked with, and it takes a moment to recall, but he’s pretty sure it’s Ensign Winters from engineering.

The ensign notices him looking and rises from her seat. He can see the fresh tear tracks on her face as she approaches, the red around her eyes.

“Captain,” she says and Jim immediately straightens at the title.

“Ensign,” he says, nodding. “Please have a seat.”

“Thank you, sir.” Her eyes are hard despite the tears, her mouth a thin line.

“Call me Jim. There’s no need for formality,” he says gently. “How can I help you?”

Winters shakes her head. “I don’t know if you remember, sir. Noah—my fiance and I had just applied to be married on your ship. Right before the Khan incident, though I guess we’re not supposed to call it that.”

“I do remember,” Jim says. He'd been looking forward to it. It was supposed to be the first marriage he’d get to officiate as captain of the _Enterprise_ , and it was one of the first things he thought of right after he’d been demoted and lost the ship. Bones would sometimes call him a romantic, and the only time Jim ever admitted it to himself had been in that bar when he realized he’d never get to unite Angela Winters and Noah Tomlinson in holy matrimony. 

It was a stupid regret and he forgot about it as soon as Pike showed up. And then there was the attack on HQ, the Qo’noS mission, Admiral Marcus arriving and threatening his entire crew and— _oh_. 

Jim wonders if she can see the moment the penny drops and how much she must hate him if she does.

“What happened to Noah?” he asks.

She smiles bitterly. “He was in a coma. I spent five months at his bedside, waiting for him to wake up. Every day I read his favorite book to him because his doctors said it would help.” She pauses to look Jim in the eye and the next words sound like a confession. “He died this morning when I went out for coffee.”

Jim closes his eyes, no longer able to meet her gaze. He braces himself; he knows that tone, the one like bitter tea leaves that get spit out and spell misfortune in your dish. He knows she’s going to slap him.

Arms wrap around his waist and Jim jolts, his eyes flying open in surprise. Winters is sitting next to him now, head buried in his shoulder as she clings to him. Tentatively, he raises his arms to return the embrace.

“Thank you,” she says and Jim can feel his hospital shirt grow wet with her tears.

He wonders what she’s thanking him for. For being dumb enough to fly straight into a trap? For risking all their lives because of some stupid vendetta, for bringing only half of his crew home, for waking up when her fiance didn’t? He wants to tell her everything he’s done, tell her she’s thanking the wrong person, wants to make his own confession. But when he looks down and sees her body heaving with barely-contained sobs, his throat tightens and no words come out. 

“I should let you rest,” she says, finally untangling herself from Jim’s arms. She smiles at him as she turns to go. “Feel better, Captain.”

The cafeteria is empty now except for Jim and the echo of her steps. A chill runs through him, starting in his bones and spreading like the underground tributaries of a lost ocean. By the time it reaches Jim’s head and hair and the tip of his nose, he feels like he’s drowning. 

Gasping, he reaches for his comm.

“It was just a panic attack,” Bones tells him later when they’re back in his room. Two food trays sit next to them; his friend had insisted they have an evening meal together.

“Just?” he scoffs.

“A particularly bad panic attack,” Bones allows. “I’m just glad I didn’t have to take a weed whacker to your lungs.”

Jim tries to smile but is sure it turns into a grimace. He’s still cold, still shaking, and he can’t stop thinking about Noah Tomlinson, the vague outlines of his face, the shape of a man he almost remembers.

“Do you want to tell me what triggered it?”

“Not really.”

“Even if I bribe you with ice cream?” Bones asks, a smile tugging at his lips.

Jim shakes his head. “Too cold.”

“You’re cold?” Bones says, the smile leaving in an instant. “Let me check you for a fever.”

“No!” Jim shouts, and his friend staggers back in surprise. If he has a fever, Bones won’t let him go to PT tomorrow, and that’s another day he’ll be stuck in here with the white walls and the yellow lights and the people who look at him like he’s a hero. Where he has nothing to think about except the crew he’s lost and the man who still won’t visit him. “I’m fine. Just tired and a little rattled is all. You don’t need to check.”

“It’ll only take two seconds.”

“I’m fine, Bones.”

“Like Hell you are. You’re shaking like a chihuahua taking a shit.”

“Thanks. And believe me, it’s nothing. Just eat your dinner.”

“That's my line, and we can both eat our dinners once I figure out if you have a fever or not.” 

“Please don’t,” Jim says, his voice a little too much like a whine.

“And why the hell not? Did something happen in the cafeteria you don’t want me to know about?”

“No.” Jim says, shaking his head. “I just....Bones, I’m just so tired of being sick.”

The fire leaves Bones’ eyes and he lowers the tricorder. “Jim, I—”

There's one loud, resonant knock at the door and Bones scowls, clearly reluctant to end their conversation. He casts a look at Jim over his shoulder as he goes to answer it.

“Don’t think for a second this conversation is over. As soon as i get rid of whoever’s on the other side of—”

“Spock!” Jim shouts, nearly falling out of his bed as the door opens and the elder Vulcan walks in. A smile breaks out on Jim’s face even as he corrects himself: “Ambassador Selek.”

There’s a slight uptick at the corner of the Vulcan’s mouth and he raises his hand in greeting. “Jim.”

“Great. Just fucking perfect,” Bones grumbles as the ambassador turns to him. “You know I’m not going to get another single thing out of him tonight now that you’re here? You Vulcans have the worst fucking timing of any species I’ve ever met.”

“Bones, be nice.”

“It is quite alright, Jim,” the ambassador says. “I did not intend to intrude on a private conversation. I will return tomorrow if that is what you wish.”

“No, stay,” Jim says, sending a glare at the doctor. “Bones is just grouchy because someone stole his bridge and he hasn’t eaten any children all week.”

The ambassador’s eyebrow rises. “I am afraid I do not understand the reference.”

“He’s calling me a troll, which is rich given the present company.” Bones sighs and runs a hand down his face. “OK, I’ll take my dinner to the employee lounge. You have one hour to visit and then Jim and I are going to sit down and have a talk. If anything happens—if he so much as sneezes too hard—comm me immediately.”

Jim makes a face, but the ambassador nods his assent.

“You need not worry, Doctor. He is in capable hands.”

“Yeah, sure,” Bones grunts as he grabs his dinner. “Just don’t do anything stupid. Either of you.”

The door closes and the ambassador turns to regard Jim, his dark eyes shining in the low light.

“I regret that I was unable to come sooner.”

“It’s fine,” Jim says as leans back onto the bed. “I’m sure the colony’s been keeping you busy.”

“Indeed it has. Nonetheless, that is no excuse for neglecting to visit an old friend.”

Jim shrugs. “Do you mind getting me an extra blanket from one of those cupboards? I’m freezing.”

The ambassador nods and returns with a knitted cover.

“Thanks,” Jim says, grinning. “Now all is forgiven.”

He receives only a raised eyebrow in return and something like amusement passes over the Vulcan’s face. “I spoke very briefly with my counterpart before the Khan incident. Or rather, during. I imagine he has related this to you?”

“Uh, no,” Jim says. “He hasn’t mentioned it.”

“Indeed not? It was merely a warning. He wished to speak to me about the Khan of my universe, and I informed him that he had only been defeated at a great cost.”

“What does that mean?”

Spock cocks his head, as if considering a problem. “I am surprised my counterpart has not told you.”

“He’s been busy. Dealing with the admiralty, overseeing repairs, that kind of stuff. Especially with me out of commission.”

The ambassador nods slowly. “I told him I perished while realigning the ship’s warp core.”

“Wait a second,” Jim says, shooting up. “You died too? How did I not know this?”

“I believe I just asked you that question.”

Jim waves that aside. “Someone should have told me! What was it like for you? Were you in a coma? Bones said something about a Vulcan healing trance once, which I guess is a little like a coma.”

“The conditions of my death and subsequent resurrection were extremely different than those of your own. I’m afraid I cannot make a comparison.”

“Oh,” Jim says, frowning. “Do you want to talk about it?”

The ambassador’s lips twitch. “That is not necessary. It was many years ago and I had my own Jim to talk to.”

“I’m glad,” Jim says, pulling the blankets closer around himself.

“Indeed. but perhaps you wish to speak to me about your experiences?”

“No, that’s alright. I have Bones and my own Spock if I need to talk to someone.”

The Vulcan frowns, his dark eyes watching Jim’s hand as he picks at the fringe on his blanket. “And yet it sounds as though my counterpart has been conspicuously absent.”

“Yeah, um.” Jim sighs and straightens out the fringe. There’s no point in lying to Spock—either Spock. They’ve both always had that uncanny ability to see straight through him. “I think I might have pissed him off. He just kinda up and disappeared.”

“How long ago was this?”

“About four months.”

Spock’s eyebrows—both of them this time—rise above his hairline. “You are certain he is still on Earth?”

“Yeah, we know that much. I wasn’t lying when I said he’s overseeing repairs. The admiralty seems very happy with him, so I guess I don't have reason to complain.”

The ambassador studies him in the dim light, a frown pulling at his lips. “Do you mind?” he asks as he raises a hand towards Jim’s face.

Jim flinces back involuntarily and tries to cover it with a cough. 

“Sorry. I don’t think I can handle any emotional transference right now.”

“It will not be a full meld,” the Vulcan says, lowering his hand. “It will be superficial. I merely wish to ascertain something.”

“What will it feel like?” Jim whispers, wrapping the blankets tighter around himself.

“It will be a mere touch.”

Jim nods and then the ambassador’s hand is rising to his face. He doesn’t feel the fingers connect, but he knows the moment they touch his mind, like something brushing against his skull. It fills all the empty spaces, too big to contain, and then gone an instant later.

His eyes flutter open and Spock has already retreated back to his chair, his hands folded in his lap. It’s like the room has grown or they’ve both shrunk; he’s farther away now, and the lights seem dimmer.

“What a mess I've made of you,” Spock whispers, almost too low for Jim to hear. His head’s bowed now and seems to be inspecting his hands. “I hardly recognize you this time.”

Jim’s watching him, trying to make sense of the words, when the tears start. They come out like there’s a hidden ocean inside him and the land’s given away. He buries his face in the blankets, his body shaking as sobs wrack him over and over.

He can feel the bed dip as Spock sits next to him and two strong arms wrap around his shoulders.

“Don’t go,” Jim whispers, too ashamed to raise his face. “Please. Not until I fall asleep, at least. I can’t deal with Bones yelling at me tonight.”

Spock nods into Jim’s shoulder, running his hands down his back. The room still feels too big, the space between them wide and chasmal even as they touch. Jim thinks he’s spinning at first, then tripping, and then he realizes he must finally be falling asleep.

It was a fever, as it turns out. The ambassador had waited until Jim fell asleep before informing Bones of his elevated temperature. Jim feels a little betrayed when he finds out, but that’s a week later after the infection has finally passed and Spock has already arranged transport back to New Vulcan.

The dreams become stranger during the fever. Sometimes the figure comes closer to the bed, leans right over his face and still Jim can’t make out any features. Sometimes it turns into Kodos and he’s splattered in blood the same way he was that day at city hall. Sometimes it’s Spock, the young Spock, _his_ Spock, and when he opens his mouth to speak only white spores come out.

Sometimes he wakes up and sees Bones talking to him and the figure is still there, standing right behind him.

The infection sets Jim’s recovery back at least two weeks. He returns to physical therapy with legs that wobble and lungs that get winded after only a few minutes. He ignores Bones’ scowl and works harder than he did before.

Two weeks after that, Bones finally, reluctantly agrees to sign his release papers.

“What do you think about a party?” Jim asks as his friend rolls him out the front door. Autumn’s arrived and Jim finds himself smiling at the burnt reds of the dying leaves and the snap of the cool air.

“I think you don’t have the energy,” Bones grumbles. He hails a taxi and starts to help Jim into the hovercar.

“It’s fine, I got it. I just graduated from PT, remember?”

Bones rolls his eyes but lets Jim enter before climbing in after.

“You still have a lot of recovering to do, you know. You need to stick to those exercises Pham assigned you and then visit her in a month. And you need to start gaining some weight back. I talked to the nutritionist and—”

“I already have your notes, Bones,” Jim says, waving him off as he rolls down the car window. “Let’s talk about something else. Like having one last hurrah before you leave for Georgia and I go to Iowa.”

Jim’s nearly stuck his head out the window like a dog before Bones yanks him back into his seat.

“Are you sure Iowa’s such a good idea, Jim? I told you we can put you up if you want to come with me.”

“Bones, I love you, but I’m a little sick of your face right now.”

“Well, fuck you too, Jim,” his friend grumbles. He releases the back of Jim’s shirt as he makes another attempt toward the window.

“Just say you love me too,” Jim laughs. “We can invite the senior crew back if they’re willing to make the trip. They’re probably tired of vacationing by now.”

“They’re not all workaholics like you. Let’s just get you home and settled before we make any plans.”

Jim’s apartment is small and neat and barely lived in. He stretches out on the king-size bed and immediately feels ill-at-ease. He tries the couch instead, which isn’t much better, but he smiles brightly at Bones as he says his farewell.

“I'm just a block away and I don't leave for Georgia until tomorrow. Don’t hesitate to call if you need anything.”

Jim gives his friend a mock salute as the door closes and then he’s alone in his apartment. He had picked the smallest option available to him, and still it feels too big. He wraps his arms around his legs and closes his eyes. 

_Fuck_ , he thinks. _What am I even doing here?_

Bones calls him the next day and seems to have changed his tune about the party. 

“We can talk about it over dinner,” he says. “How about Del Maro’s down the street? Heard they make a good steak”

His friend has never been very good at lying, so when Jim arrives at the restaurant and is greeted by a chorus of “Surprise!” he pretends to jump and smiles widely.

“Hey, guys,” he says, waving at his senior crew.

Uhura rises to hug him and Sulu claps him on the back. 

“Good to see you on your feet, Jim.”

“They sat us on the back patio,” Uhura says as she drags him along. She looks back and winks. “Drinks are on Scotty.”

There's a little bit of magic in the air as laughter interrupts the noises of the city and the bonfire’s flames lick skyward. Jim watches as his friends hug and clasp shoulders and lean on each other until they’re the only thing keeping the other up. He wonders when they became so close. He wonders how he missed it.

These people had all called him a hero. They followed him into a trap, saw their friends killed, saw Jim make the biggest mistake of his life. And still they came out thinking he deserved their loyalty. Jim closes his eyes and wonders some more.

He only accepts one drink because he doesn’t want Bones on his case and because he’s pretty sure he’s become a lightweight after all those months in the hospital. It goes straight to his head and Jim realizes he must not have eaten much that day because he starts laughing at all of Sulu’s jokes, giggling even as Bones rolls his eyes.

There's something else in the air, something a little intoxicating, and Jim recognizes the smell. He searches through the crowd and spots Gaila finally doing a slow dance with Uhura. It’s her pheromones, he knows. Even with the suppressants, she sometimes lets some of her more subtle hormones slip out. It has an intoxicating effect and Jim knows how some people respond when they realize she’s been influencing them.

He makes eye contact and crosses his eyes. It’s the same signal they used back in school, and she catches on immediately. Her face turns a dark, mossy green and she smiles sheepishly at him. 

He would sometimes wonder, back at the Academy and even more after, why he never started coughing up Gaila’s favorite flowers. They were an Orion variety, soft pink with silver pistils. Then again, Gaila had always loved so freely and so unreservedly, like her heart were an old house—the slightly haunted kind that twists and turns and never ends. 

Jim winks at her and shakes his head. 

He starts to feel a little too good after that and no one can come within a three-foot radius without getting kissed on the cheek. Bones hollers and nearly manages to pour a glass of water over Jim’s head before Sulu interferes.

And when a figure emerges in the doorway, long robes trailing behind, makeup carefully applied, and unreadable expression firmly in place, Jim can’t really help it if he shouts,

“Spock! Spock’s here!”

Everyone turns to look, and Jim’s legs are working faster than his brain, because one second he’s standing next to Bones and the next he’s rushed over to Spock. He places two fingers to the Vulcan’s palm, then stands on his tippy toes and gives him a kiss on the cheek.

“Arrest me, officer,” he says, standing back to look in Spock’s face. “I’ve been stealing kisses.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains graphic depictions of violence. If you want to skip, stop reading at "As he rushes again at the glass, the scene changes." and resume at "he jolts awake, throat constricting in panic and chest heaving." The violence isn't real—it happens strictly in the dream world—but still might be disturbing.
> 
> There's also some minor violence and body horror included in a flashback to an away mission. This section is bracketed by two ❀ symbols.
> 
> Let me know if there's anything I missed!


	3. Part Three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm sorry, this took a lot longer to finish than i thought it would. endings are hard.
> 
> additional warnings at end of chapter

San Francisco is full of sound and commotion and lights abounding in the sky, and Spock finds he does not care for it.

Ski’Kahr, when he had visited it as a child (and he had visited it nearly daily; though the S’chn T’gai household was several miles outside the city, Spock’s school was inside, hidden among the gothic spires at the beating heart of the city where children sojourned every day to test their minds through the rigors of labyrinthine puzzles and equations), had been neat and orderly by comparison. 

Full of unnecessary architectural flourishes, yes. Burdened with an illogical design and streets that twist with thousands of years of history, most definitely. But the people themselves walked in straight lines, neatly-trimmed haircuts bobbing as they greeted each other, accommodating the surprising world with the slightest incline of their head or the rise of an eyebrow.

Vulcans are a people of straight lines and linear thought and, even if Shi’Kahr itself burst from the soil like an unwieldy forest, Spock had found comfort in the city’s rhythms—the reliability of the train, of the cogs in the old clock at Lun’lah Square, of the stars that came out if Spock dawdled at the library.

There is very little to rely on in San Francisco, except perhaps the streets, numbered as they are, and laid out in a grid pattern. 

The people run late and the trains do too, and always with a great clamor. Nights are shorter here on Earth than they were on Vulcan, but they are louder too, humans and aliens alike running through the streets with joyful shouts, heedless of the time and their bodies’ demand for sleep.

Even the stars seem louder, distant lights that had roared down at Spock that night after the hospital.

He had returned to his apartment exhausted from the hours at the shipyard. Exhausted, too, from the new link tugging at his mind and the walls he had built around it, and Spock had every intention of spending his evening in meditation and then falling into a deep and restful sleep.

He did not expect to dream.

He did not expect the nightmares to return, for his eyes to close and his lids be painted with the red of human blood. Did not expect his face reflected in the glass of the radiation chamber, his fists turned scarlet, and his captain dead a hundred times over, blue eyes vacant as if his katra had been tucked away into the black of his receding pupils.

That night and nearly every night after, he hears Jim’s voice:

“I’m scared, Spock. Help me not be.”

Spock wakes from the dreams shaking, hands too unsteady even to light the candles for his meditation. Those first few nights he does not meditate, does not find himself capable; he simply sits on his mat until the sun rises and it becomes necessary for him to start his day.

There is, after all, no shortage of work to be done, and it allows him to keep his hands occupied, if not always his mind. Sometimes Spock closes his eyes in the middle of his work—an experiment he offered to assist on at the Academy, repairs at the shipyard, diplomatic matters at the Vulcan Embassy—and sees hands. Jim’s hand pressed against the glass, his own hands wrapped around a throat, the phantom hands that pull at his arm in the dreams, trying to hold him back before the final blow.

When meditation continues to elude him, and he takes to wandering the city instead. It is meditative, in a way, to count his steps, each pound of his feet against the earth, as the world whizzes by. He knows these streets from his days at the Academy, but they are different now, so much different than they were before he met the blue-eyed cadet with the wide smile.

That same smile stops him in his tracks outside the shuttle station, and Spock does not allow himself to feel surprise as he picks up the latest copy of Starfleet Monthly. Jim looks back at him, proud and bright; the photo is from the day he received his captaincy, from before Khan and before Spock’s transgression.

He reads it cover to cover. He does not know what he is looking for, but he does not find it. The magazine includes a fascinating article on a Betazoid study of the Medusan system—their scientists posit the existence of an interdimensional civilization, one that is likely highly advanced—and he pretends that this is the reason he tucks it under his arm and takes it home.

Meditation returns to him finally after several weeks. Spock does not believe he can purge the dreams from his mind, not when he is still so unsettled, but perhaps he can change the outcome. Perhaps he can save Jim.

He adds hands. Phantom hands that pull at his arm and nails that bite at his skin. Thousands of fingers gripping right before the final blow, and night after night he still must watch Jim die.

And even when the dream does change, even on the rare nights where the person below him is Khan and it is the madman’s face that Spock pounds against, Jim still dies. Spock murders Khan in his wild grief and the transfusion comes too late.

San Francisco clamors around him, loud and furious, and Spock begins to spend less time attending to his duties and more walking the streets. He meditates as he does so, counting the number of steps it takes to get to the train station, the number of stops before the city becomes unrecognizable, the passengers that look at him with something like recognition before they too depart into the beckoning night.

He counts stars and calculates the redshift of passing porch lights. It lulls him to sleep sometimes and, when he awakes, he finds that his mind is clearer and tug of the link less insistent.

In time, he does not feel it at all. The dreams begin to dissipate too and the fear leaves his blood and every short circuited thought. He can once again close his eyes and see only black.

Ambassador Selek comes to him not long after, wearing a tight line for a mouth. His greeting is cold and brief.

“Young one,” he says, gaze unwavering, “you have not visited Jim in many months.”

“I have not,” Spock admits, not allowing himself to show surprise at the elder’s brusque words. His contact with the crew has been limited in the months since he stopped visiting Jim, limited to a few words exchanged with Nyota to assure her of his safety. Surely, she would have informed him if Jim’s condition had deteriorated. “I assume he is convalescing adequately?”

“He has developed an infection. The doctor assures me of a swift recovery, though it may set back his recovery by several weeks.”

Spock feels his pulse quicken at the words, though he does not analyze why. “Is this the reason for your visit? To inform me of the captain’s condition?”

“No. What I came to inform you I am sure you already know. Jim allowed me to touch his mind and we engaged in a superficial meld.” He pauses and Spock finds he can no longer maintain eye contact. “You have formed a link.”

Once again, Spock closes his eyes and can see only red. He thinks, irrationally, of twil’la leaves.

“It is not so grave a crime as you believe, Spock.”

“Is it not?” His eyes fly open and he feels an irrational surge of anger. “He did not give his consent. I transgressed upon his mind and upon his katra. I bound him inextricably to myself and have not even had the courage to tell him.”

The ambassador shakes his head, eyes studying him in the low light. “Talk to him, Spock. You may be surprised.”

Spock redoubles his meditation efforts after that. If the ambassador could detect the link in Jim’s mind, it is still far too strong. He stops walking the city, afraid that he has allowed it to become a distraction.

And then he receives the voicemail from Nyota. It is hardly the first—in fact, Spock knows it to be number thirty seven—and he intends to delete it just as he has the rest. He pauses, however, when her voice rings through his empty apartment. 

“Jim just got out of the hospital. Thought you’d want to know even if you’re determined to be an idiot right now. We’re celebrating tomorrow at Del Maro’s on Balboa Street if you want to come.” 

Jim is safe. He is well—well enough, at least, to be discharged from the hospital and released from Dr. McCoy’s careful supervision. And Spock desires to see him, desires to see his captain alive and healthy and no longer covered in his own blood. He wants to see something other than red when he closes his eyes.

He has not looked at his issue of Starfleet Monthly in well over a month. It is tucked into the bottom drawer of his desk, and he does not intend to take it out now.

The sun has nearly completed its descent when Spock boards the bus (late, as per usual), the clamorous reds of sunset fading into night. The sky is clear and Spock, as he often does on nights such as these, thinks about slipping away to the Academy observatory. Vulcan was only sixteen point two lightyears away from Earth and, if he were to peer into the Cochrane telescope, he would see it still. He would see it as it looked sixteen point two years ago, when Spock was just a child and his mother was still alive. Perhaps, if he looked hard enough, he would see Amanda’s scarves among the neatly trimmed haircuts, her smile as she looks to the stars and to her home planet.

It is an illogical thought, and Spock shakes it from his mind as the bus comes to a halt. He wears his black robes like a protective cloak and soon finds himself on the back patio of the restaurant where the crew is engaged in merrymaking. 

A shout rings out through the yard and someone stumbles forward, moving remarkably fast given their inebriated state, slipping two fingers into Spock’s palm and then two lips against his cheek.

“Arrest me, officer,” the captain—Spock nearly does not recognize the wan and haggard man, so different from the magazine cover, but it is undoubtedly his captain—says. “I’ve been stealing kisses.”

Spock freezes, eyes wide as he looks up into the yard. The crew has paused in their carousing, mouths agape, an elaborate tableau of dumbfoundment lit by the flickering bonfire.

For once, San Francisco is silent. The loquacious city struck dumb.

The captain breaks the illusion as he stumbles backwards, eyes suddenly sharp with understanding and something that looks like panic, his face draining of what little color it has left.

“S-Spock, I—”

“What the hell are you doing here?” Dr. McCoy’s voice cuts through the yard, interrupting the captain’s stumbling words.

Spock recovers quickly and raises an eyebrow. “I came to offer my services as a ‘designated driver,’ as I believe Lieutenant Uhura phrased it.”

All eyes turn to Nyota and she shifts uncomfortably before sending him a glare. “I invited you to the party, Spock. The designated driver thing was a joke.”

“I see,” Spock says, though he’s not sure he does. She had mentioned it in her message and he had assumed it was a genuine request.

“That’s not what I meant,” McCoy says, voice rising. “I meant, what gives you the right to show up here after abandoning your friends for five months?”

“I believe the lieutenant just answered your question,” Spock says, allowing impatience to slip into his voice. “Her invitation gave me the right.”

The tableau breaks all at once as the doctor rushes towards him. “You smug sonuvabitch. Do you have any idea what you did to Jim? Just wait ‘til I—”

“Bones. _Bones_.” The captain steps into the doctor’s path, grabbing his arm. “It’s OK.”

“OK? After what he did?” McCoy glares at Spock from over the captain’s shoulder, rage contorting his features. “After the way he abandoned you?”

“Please don’t,” Jim says, shaking his head. Spock watches as the captain straightens his shoulders, a forced smile twisting his lips as he turns to face him, complexion still pale despite the glow of the fire. 

“I’m glad you’re here, Spock. It’s not a party without you.”

The doctor snorts, but already the tension has begun to dissipate. A few guests glance warily at Spock, but the rest turn back to each other, muttered conversation skittering through the yard.

Spock intends to thank the captain, but when he turns the other man has already started away, rushing toward the restaurant’s interior with the doctor in tow. He frowns, wondering if he should follow, but a hand grasps his arm and he’s pulled to face Nyota.

“Spock,” she hisses, anger lighting her features like flame, “where have you been? Do you have any idea how many times I tried to get ahold of you?”

Spock blinks, taken aback by her fury. “Indeed I do. I counted fifty two attempted comms, thirty seven voicemails, and seventy nine text messages.”

“Don’t get smart with me,” she snaps. “Just tell me what happened so I know how angry I need to be.”

“Nothing happened,” Spock says, glancing around the yard. Lieutenant Vro seems to have noticed their exchange and is heading toward them. “I have simply been occupied with other matters.”

She rolls her eyes. “Is that the best you can come up with?”

“It is the truth.”

“Alright, fine. You don’t have to tell me, but you at least owe Jim an explanation.”

Spock stiffens. “I fail to see what the captain has to do—”

“I’m not an idiot, Spock, and neither is he. It has everything to do with him. Or are you telling me your disappearance had nothing to do with his death? That you just happened to take off when he needed you most?”

Spock opens his mouth to speak, but nothing comes out. In truth, he had not fully considered the ramifications of his departure. He had known only that he needed to leave, to destroy the link. He had not thought how this would affect the captain.

Nyota watches him, but Spock finds that he cannot meet her gaze.

“I know something must have happened,” she says, voice gentling as she reaches out to squeeze Spock’s arm. “Maybe you can tell him about it. At the very least, you need to apologize.”

Spock’s fingers twitch. He wishes he could tell her. He wishes he could touch her skin and look into her eyes and that she would understand. Understand the transgression he committed, understand why he had to leave for the captain’s—for _Jim_ ’s—sake. Nyota has a mind like lightning and he thinks it would take but a single word and a single touch. 

Her hand lowers as Lieutenant Vro arrives at her side, and Spock does not stop it. It is for the best, of course. She cannot know. No one can.

“Thank you, Nyota,” he says, head bowed.

“Don’t thank me yet.” She glances at the lieutenant and takes her hand. “He might not want to forgive you.”

Spock nods and begins to turn away.

“Oh, and Spock?” Nyota calls, a smile slipping onto her face. “Since you accepted the job of designated driver, how about you pay for my ride home?”

She winks as she heads back into the crowd, her hand interlaced with the deep green of the lieutenant’s fingers. Spock watches as they go, momentarily lost in thought until a chill runs through him and he turns back toward the restaurant.

“It’s my party and I can cry if I want to.”

Jim sits on the bathroom floor, head buried in his hands as he mumbles the words. There’s a mess in front of him where he didn’t quite make it to the toilet, and he doesn’t want to open his eyes quite yet, even if he knows exactly what it will look like. Red leaves, blue flowers, and a Cardassian Sunrise for good measure.

Bones shifts behind him and Jim sighs. “I’m pretty sure I’m done now.”

“That goddamn son of an elf,” his friend grumbles, rubbing Jim’s back. “I’’ll go find something to clean it up.”

Jim nods and rubs the tears for his eyes. Fuck it all, it had been weeks since his last attack. Not a single petal since the infection had cleared and Jim had actually thought things were going to get easier. Thought maybe he’d love Spock a little less, that the flowers wouldn’t hurt as much. That he wouldn’t have to worry every day about things that rip the tissue from his lungs only to die the moment they leave his body.

“Fuck me,” he mutters as fresh tears trail down his face.

“Captain?”

Jim shoots up, slamming the stall door shut. “Uh, yeah?”

“I came to ascertain your status,” the voice says, and fuck, it’s not just a voice, there’s definitely a Spock attached to it and right now Jim can’t rub two brain cells together to come up with a response.

“OK,” he says finally. There’s a long pause before Spock speaks again.

“I am unsure if that was an acknowledgement of my statement or an evaluation of your wellbeing.”

“The hostess kept asking questions, but I found a mop and— Well, shit.” Jim can hear the squeak of Bones’ shoes as he halts in his tracks.

“Is the captain ill?” Spock asks. “I was led to believe he had made a full recovery under your care.”

“He’s doing just fine, no thanks to you. He just—”

“I just drank a little too much, Spock,” Jim cuts in. “Bones told me to take it easy, but I was feeling ambitious. You know how I can get.”

“I see,” Spock says. Jim shifts uneasily, waiting for the sound of retreating footsteps.

“I'm fine,” Jim says, wincing as his voice breaks. “That’s what you came in here for, right? To ask how I was? Because I'm just peachy.”

“I am relieved to hear so. There is, however, something else I wish to discuss.”

“Well, spit it out,” Bones snaps.

“It is a private matter.”

“For the love of—”

“It’s alright, Bones. J-just give me a minute,” Jim says, glancing at the petals beneath his feet. “Spock, can you wait outside?”

The Vulcan doesn’t respond, but Jim can hear the echo of his footsteps as he leaves the bathroom. 

“Fuck,” he groans, opening the stall door.

“Are you sure about this?” Bones asks as he shoves the mop into Jim’s hands. “Wasn’t that enough foliage for one night?”

“It'll be fine,” Jim says, making a brave attempt at a smile. “You said yourself his presence will help reduce attacks.”

“I said it _might_. And that was before you puked up Grandma Myrtle’s rose garden just because he showed up at your party.”

“I was embarrassed. And surprised. And—oh fuck, I Vulcan kissed him didn’t I?” Realization hits him like a high-speed shuttle and he has to grab Bones’ arm to keep himself upright. “What if that’s what he wants to talk about?”

“See, this is what I mean.”

Jim shakes his head, doing his best to inhale when he can still feel Spock’s palm against his fingers, still feel the pheromones and the ghost of artificial love and the overwhelming shame once he’d realized what he’d done.

“He’s still my first officer,” Jim says, quelling the panic rising in his chest. Spock must hate him. Maybe that’s why he wanted to talk; maybe that’s why he left in the first place. Because Jim’s too careless, too punch-drunk, too irresponsible to captain a starship and Spock’s finally figured it out.

“As long as he doesn’t resign, that is. I need to be able to talk to him.”

“Alright,” Bones says, though his face is still skeptical. “But if you have another attack, it’s your turn to clean it up.”

“I’m cleaning up this one, too,” Jim says, holding the mop up in demonstration as his friend turns to leave.

“And don’t come crying to me!” Bones calls over his shoulder.

The twil’la leaves circle the drain a few times and Jim watches before turning to the sink to wash his hands. They shake slightly and he notices for the first time how ashen his skin has become.

Spock’s chosen the bench right next to the bathroom and he rises as soon as he sees Jim approach.

“That’s fine, Spock,” Jim says, shaking his head. “Please sit down.”

His friend nods and they both sit, regarding each other before Spock opens his mouth to speak.

“Captain, I would like to—”

“I'm sorry, Spock,” Jim blurts out, watching as Spock’s eyes widen. “That was wildly inappropriate. I never meant to make you uncomfortable, though I know that’s exactly what I did. I completely understand if you decide to write me up and I won’t fight it.”

Spock stares at him, an eyebrow raised in perfect condescension, and Jim shifts uncomfortably. 

“You are referring to what happened on the patio?”

“Yeah. I kissed your palm. Finger kisses—they’re more than a peck on the cheek. You barely even tolerate people touching you and then I go pull something like that. I’m so sorry, Spock.”

“Captain,” Spock says, tilting his head slightly as if Jim is a problem he hasn’t figured out yet. “I admit I was perplexed by your actions, but I did not find them offensive. That is not the reason I wished to speak with you.”

“Oh,” Jim says, the word coming out in a great gust of breath.

“In fact, I wanted to offer my own apology. I have been informed that I have been negligent in my duties as your friend. I was not present to aid in your recovery and in fact ‘abandoned’ you, as I believe the doctor phrased it.”

Jim stares at him, biting his lip as he considers his next words. “Spock, did I do something?”

“Why do you ask?”

“I haven’t seen you in months. Haven’t heard a word; no one has. Now, I know I'm not special enough to be the only reason you disappeared. I know there must be something else, and I’m not going to pry. But then you come here and you won’t call me by my name. You refer to our friendship as a ‘duty.’ Spock, you won’t even look me in the eye. Please, if I did something, just tell me.”

Spock has turned away from him, eyes downcast, and Jim has to resist the urge to reach out. He studies his friend’s profile, the long lashes and soft slope between brow and nose, the furrowed lines that make it sharper.

“Spock,” he says, bumping his shoulder against the Vulcan’s. He wants to do more, but he doesn’t dare. “It’s OK. You can tell me.”

“Captain. Jim. You did nothing wrong. I do not feel anger toward you.”

“Right,” Jim says, letting a smile slip out as he nudges him again. “Because you’re Vulcan and Vulcans don’t feel anger.”

Spock straightens but doesn’t pull away. “Indeed they do not. There is, however, another reason. I believe that I am the one who has committed a transgression.”

“Oh?” Jim says before stifling a yawn. The day has suddenly caught up with him and he has to resist the urge to lean into Spock’s shoulder.

“Indeed. I....experienced a slip in control. An egregious slip that had potentially disastrous consequences.” Jim watches, waiting for Spock to elaborate, but his friend has gone back to staring at the floor.

“Is this about Khan?” he asks. “Bones mentioned you went a little crazy after—well, after the radiation chamber.”

Spock still does not look at him when he says, “Yes.”

“Alright,” Jim says, considering. “You know, anger isn’t the worst thing in the world. I used to wear it like a second skin back before the Academy. It's like fear. And don’t get too smug, but I can almost see why you designed the Maru the way you did. Fear and anger—they’re both necessary for survival.”

“Jim,” Spock says, turning to face him, an eyebrow already raised, “I do not experience—”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. You don’t experience those emotions. But maybe you’ll allow an illogical human to wax poetic for a moment.”

Spock inclines his head and Jim can’t help but smile. He must really be tired because he can’t stop grinning, not now that Spock will finally look him in the eye.

“You almost killed him, or at least that’s what Bones said. And yes, that’s an egregious slip in control, but I wouldn’t be here without it. You wouldn’t have chased him down, wouldn’t have caught him if it weren’t for that slip. In all likelihood, he would have gotten away and more people would have died. It’s your anger that saved me and saved countless others. You can’t punish yourself for that.”

“Jim,” Spock says, and there’s an edge to it this time, and something strange in his eyes. “I am not sure you understand.”

“Alright. Help me understand,” Jim says, but Spock just shakes his head. “I know how ugly anger can be, Spock. And I know that you’re not ugly just for feeling it.”

A smile tuggs at the Vulcan’s lips. “I thank you for your words, Jim. But I still must apologize. I should never have left you”

“It’s alright,” Jim says. It’s a lie, of course, but right then it doesn’t feel like one. In the warmth of the restaurant with Spock by his side and the laughter of the crew still audible form outside, it feels like the truth. “Listen, I’m beat and you owe me, so I’m going to put my head on your shoulder and close my eyes and you don’t get to complain, alright?”

“Perhaps it would be best if I assisted you to your apartment.”

“Nope,” he says, eyes already falling closed. “Don’t like it there. It’s lonely.”

Spock’s shoulder is warm and Jim presses closer as he feels sleep tug at him. He counts Spock’s breaths, the deep and seldom inhales, and tries to match them with his own. For a moment, he imagines he can feel Spock’s heartbeat, but it’s too far away down there in his side, and Jim knows that it must be his own that he feels pounding beneath his cheek.

He’s just lost count of breaths when Spock stiffens, his shoulder becoming sharp against Jim’s neck. Then the warmth is gone, the Vulcan standing upright and moving toward the yard.

“Spock?” Jim calls. “Spock, I—”

But he’s already gone and when Jim whispers “I’m sorry,” it’s to no one but the empty air and whatever ghosts may be there.

That night, in between the nightmares, Jim can’t help but think about anger.

The party had ended not long after Jim rejoined his friends. Chekov found him in the midst of the goodbyes and handed him a clumsily wrapped present, red yarn peeking out where the wrapper had already torn. Jim hugged him, gave him a peck on the cheek because the young Russian had dodged him earlier, and later had pulled his new socks on before crawling into bed.

He slips into sleep and then slips right out, gasping because he’s sure the shadow figure is next to him again. The night’s turned humid and he screws his eyes shut, trying to breathe through the fear and the sudden erupting fury.

Those kids—Tommy, Kevin, Ji-ah—would never have survived without anger. Jim would never have survived. He loved them, loved them more than anything, and if he hadn’t been royally pissed the way only a thirteen-year-old can be, he would have died the morning Susan didn’t open her eyes. He would have disappeared into the forest the way Lana and Mikey did. 

_The fungus got them_ , Tommy had said, and Jim still didn’t know what that meant.

He’s angry now too. Angry at the damn San Francisco weather that won’t let him sleep, angry at the dreams, at his mind as it sets a restless rhythm against his skull. Angry enough to sit up and punch his pillow and, when that doesn’t work, punch the wall instead. 

Nothing breaks, not even the skin, and when the sun rises barely an hour later, Jim doesn’t have to hide his hand as he leaves to meet Bones at the shuttle station. 

He hugs his friend a little too hard and promises to be careful, and yes he’ll let him know if he has another attack and no, he won’t do anything stupid.

“I’m serious, Jim,” Bones says. “As soon as you feel so much as a tickle either contact me or someone over there.”

“Sure thing, Bones.”

“Don’t make me regret sending you without a nurse or you’re going straight back to the hospital. Oh, and I’ve been hearing about freak tornados the last few days, so watch out for those.”

“You’re going to miss your shuttle if you don’t hurry up.”

Jim buys some coffee—it’s bitter, of course, and puts Jim into a worse mood—and a paperback novel before boarding his own shuttle. It's only engineers heading to Riverside, fresh hands for the shipyard, and Jim finds a seat by himself in the back. A few glance his way, but he ignores them as he pulls out the paperback.

The words won’t focus. Bones prescribed him a pair of reading glasses not long into his stay in the hospital, but Jim’s too annoyed to start digging through his luggage, so he squints instead. Soon his thoughts start to stray toward old-fashioned bookcases and a gas mask left carelessly on the shelf, and he shoves the book back into his bag.

The flight takes too long and the engineers talk too loud, and Jim’s glowering at everyone by the time he gets off. It's a long walk back to the farmhouse and he kicks the dirt beneath him as he goes. The wind blows it west toward the quarry and Jim closes his eyes against it, sweat beading on his face.

The farmhouse crouches in the distance when he reopens his eyes, and the world feels cold again.

The door’s locked, to Jim’s surprise. He’s pretty sure he threw away the key one drunken night at the Academy, but he never forgot how to pick locks. The door opens wide like a greeting and Jim slams it back closed.

It’s all too small. The door handle feels strange in his hand and the lights are the wrong color when they flicker on. The hallways are too low and there’s a buzzing in the living room he doesn’t remember.

Jim knows which stair will creak on the way up and where to grasp the banister so he can land without a sound. He knows the noise the top step will make if he puts his weight on the wrong spot and how to shift his foot if he can catch it in time. 

He walks straight up because he can. Because he can close his eyes and listen to the sounds of an old house, its protestations of the years and the weight and his return.

His bedroom door is closed and Jim stands in front of it, leans his head against the wood and inhales dust. He can see his hands from this position, can see that his fist has bruises now, ugly purple and black along the knuckles. He wants to make them uglier, wants to hit the door, to tear the entire place apart with just his fists and whatever’s burning inside him right now. 

He hates this house. He's hated it for years without realizing it. And now he’s here and he’s angry at the walls, at the stairs, at the doors and the lights and the dust and all the noise it makes as it greets him. 

He’s angry at himself for pushing too far, for asking for too much right when he’d gotten Spock back. He's angry at his lungs and his stomach and the things they grow. At every irradiated cell and at the atom bomb. At the wind for blowing too hard and Bones for caring too much.

And Jim wonders the same thing he wondered all night in between the nightmares and the waking and the fury:

Why can’t he be angry at Spock? Why can’t he be furious at him for leaving and why does he have to love him instead?

Only a few petals come up that evening. Jim throws them in the compost bucket out of habit, then glances at his comm. There’s no reason to worry Bones, he decides. Not over some petals.

Food helps allay the anger and Jim even smiles drowsily as he sits at the kitchen table, chin resting in his hands, eyes drifting closed.

The red chair at the head of the table remains empty. Jim wonders if he should take it to the landfill or try repurposing the wood.

And the door upstairs remains closed. He stretches out on the couch instead and is surprised to find it larger than he remembers. Sleep swallows him in one long gulp.

The figure’s there in his dreams. It must have slipped into his pocket, crawled into his bag, then grew to fit the house, the one that’s too big and too small all at once. 

It watches Jim as he sleeps and he watches right back. 

A loud knock has him jolting awake, gasping as he squints into the new morning light.

“Fuck,” Jim mutters as he pulls off the covers and reaches for his flannel.

It’s too early for neighborly pleasantries, but he figures there’s a fifty-fifty chance that it’s a grandma with non-replicated pie. He didn’t talk to anyone on the way in, but this town has eyes everywhere, and Jim might as well put on a show for them.

The front lock is still broken from when he picked it yesterday, and the door swings wide as he pastes on a smile.

“Good mor—” He stops, mouth falling open. “ _Spock_?"

The Vulcan stands before him, perfect except for his wind-tousled bangs and the dust clinging to the ends of his robe. His expression is unreadable as he raises the ta’al.

“Good morning, Jim.”

“Wh-what are you doing here?”

“I wished to speak to you and Nyota informed me that you intended to return to your family home.”

“She—you—why didn’t you just call?” A breeze starts to pick up and Jim pulls his flannel around himself self-consciously. He’s lost too much muscle mass to be showing his body off and he gestures for Spock to come inside.

“I felt it necessary to offer my assistance in your further recovery,” Spock says, stepping through the door, eyes already tracing the room. “When I discussed the matter with Nyota, she indicated that you would not be receptive to a mere comm call and said that I should ‘just show up’ and give you no other option.”

“Was she joking?”

Spock frowns. “I do not believe so.”

“Look, Spock,” Jim says, sighing. “It’s not that I’m not happy to see you. But you don’t owe me anything. I know you feel like you do and that the crew has been getting on your case, but I’m doing fine. Healthy as a horse. You can comm Bones and ask.”

“I must confess that the doctor is also partly responsible for my visit. He believes your health fragile enough that he did not wish you left alone to your own devices and contacted me to solicit my assistance.”

“That motherfucker! I should have known!”

Spock blinks, seemingly taken aback by the outburst. “If my presence is such an imposition as to put a strain on your relationship, perhaps it would be best if I—”

“No, Spock, it’s alright. Bones is just a busybody who needs to mind his own business.”

Spock nods. “I too have had occasion to take note of the doctor’s proclivity for meddling.”

Jim snorts and gestures for Spock to sit. He pauses only a moment when the Vulcan pulls out the red chair at the head of the table.

“I appreciate you coming,” Jim says, quickly pulling out his own seat, “but you don’t have to stay. Bones has a tendency toward dramatics, and I've already told you that all is forgiven. You don’t have to be here.”

“And if I wish to be?” Spock asks, tilting his head as if considering a puzzle.

“Then I'd say you’re either lying or have terrible taste in vacation spots.”

“Vulcans do not lie.”

“So I've been told.”

“And I evidently have the same taste in leisure locales as you.”

“Spock,” Jim sighs, “you’ve worked your ass off the last few months. Go see your dad. Go to a science exhibition. Go anywhere that isn’t a po-dunk town that’s turned my fucked-up family into a tourist trap.”

Spock stills. His expression shutters and his voice is barely above a whisper as he says, “You do not want me here.”

“No, it’s not that,” Jim says. He wishes he could tell him just how much he wants him here. How much he wants him by his side, in his bed when the nightmares come, in this house that’s at once silent and loud in its wrongness. “I just don’t think you really want to be here.”

“I assure you that I do,” Spock says, raising an eyebrow. “I find that I am not at all dissuaded by this quality—’po-dunk,’ as I believe you described it—and in fact wish to learn more about it. Especially when such a term can be used to describe my friend, a friend I have not seen in many months and who may require my assistance in the unlikely but entirely possible event that he should find himself in an unfortunate circumstance.” Spock pauses, a smile tugging at his lips. “He has, after all, remarked on several occasions that trouble has a habit of finding him.”

“Fuck,” Jim sighs. “Alright, you win. You’re going to regret this after a day of nothing to do but watch corn grow, but you can stay as long as you like.”

“I appreciate your hospitality, Jim,” Spock says, looking much too pleased with himself. It’s the same look he gets when he’s just won a game of chess, and Jim rolls his eyes as he stands to leave the kitchen.

“Uh-huh. Just let me get some pants on and I’ll give you a tour.”

He grabs his bag and hurries up the stairs, skipping the creaky steps without a thought. Distantly, because he’s not quite awake yet, he thinks he’ll have to teach that to Spock too.

The captain’s hands wave through the air as he walks Spock through the house, directing his attention like an exclamation point and running through untidy strands of hair.

“You can have Sam’s old room if you want. There’s a master’s downstairs, but it gets cold at night. I’ll just take my old room.”

Spock glances at the couch where Jim seems to have spent the night, a blanket pooled beneath on the floor.

“Yeah,” Jim says, following his gaze. “I didn’t want to make up the bed last night. Speaking of which, I’ll show you where the linen closet is.”

After the upstairs, they make their way to the house’s exterior, Jim gesticulating all the way.

“There haven’t been animals here for years, but I can show you the barn and the stables if you want.” He pauses and turns to Spock, giving him a look that seems almost wary, as if waiting for him to cast aspersions. Spock merely nods and they continue on their way.

There’s a small patch of land next to the house, the unmistakable remains of a garden, and Spock pauses as they pass. The wood demarcating the spot has started to rot, the upturned soil now flattened by time and weather, weeds peeking through the cracks.

“Haven’t been any flowers here for years either,” Jim says, tugging at Spock’s sleeve. “C’mon. The barn’s actually kinda nice.”

“Nice” is not the exact word Spock would have chosen to describe the tall building. It is tidy at least, which is the most he can ask for as he climbs the ladder to the loft, the train of his robes almost tripping him as he goes. He reaches the top to find Jim grinning, the first genuine smile he’s seen from him since arriving. Spock, despite himself, nearly smiles back.

“I used to sleep up here,” Jim says, leaning back until he’s sitting with his legs dangling off the ledge. “It felt safer than the house. And you get a great view if the doors are open and the sky’s right.”

Spock sends him a skeptical look as dust filters through the air, and Jim throws his head back and laughs. The smell of old hay lingers in this place and Spock can’t help but wrinkle his nose as he watches the sun leak through the barn doors, falling onto Jim’s face.

His pupils dilate as his eyes grow distant and Spock briefly loses himself in the bright, blue worlds contained there.

The captain takes him to the creek and shows him the willow trees, his movements once again stilted and his hands flying. Spock watches as they perform their acrobatics, dappled in light by the leaves of the willows.

“Jim,” he says, interrupting him mid-rant, “Do I make you nervous?”

“What?” The man turns to him, surprise playing along his features. He glances at his hands, still raised like a conductor’s, and his mouth forms a small o before he drops them to his sides. “No, Spock. It’s not you. It’s just this place.”

Spock wanders through the property while Jim replicates himself an afternoon meal. Autumn has already gripped the land, and there is very little still alive. And it is quiet, hardly even a bird in song, as if the animals have left early. 

They make quick work of the beds and before long they’re cleaning the entire house. Jim draws the curtains and opens all the windows, scrubbing the floors with a strange fervor and a distance in his eyes. Assuming he has exhausted himself, Spock offers to take over, and the man smiles up at him and nods.

“Do you want to go into town for dinner?” he asks some time later, just as Spock has finished mopping.

Spock glances at the rapidly dimming sky. The clouds have started to turn green and he suspects there is a storm on the way. It is strange; Dr. McCoy had warned him of “freak” tornados before his trip and Spock had made sure to take meteorological readings upon his arrival. They should be experiencing clear skies. 

“I estimate the sun will set in approximately twelve point five minutes,” he says.

“I may be an invalid, but I’m not a kid,” Jim says, winking. “I’m allowed to go out after dark.”

They take Spock’s rented car, a small red vehicle designed for speed. It had been the only option available at the time, but it elicits a low whistle of approval from Jim, and Spock supposes he cannot begrudge the ostentatiousness.

“There’s this old-fashioned diner in town,” Jim says as he gets into the driver’s seat. “Not so old-fashioned that they won’t have vegetarian options, I don't think. You’ll love it.”

Spock is not sure that he finds it particularly loveable, but his vegetarian burger is sufficient and he cannot find reason to complain. It is a quaint place with tubes of electrified neon that cast a red glow over their booth, turning Jim’s ashen skin to shades of black and crimson. 

“Dessert?” Jim asks just as Spock is tucking the napkin under his plate.

“I do not require additional sustenance at this time.”

Jim rolls his eyes. “How about a milkshake? We could share.”

“I promised Dr. McCoy that I would ensure that you eat adequately. I do not believe he would be happy if he found out I was taking your food.”

“So either we share and you have to answer to Bones’ wrath,” Jim says, rubbing his chin as if in deep thought. “Or you don’t order anything and I complain to Bones and you still get chewed out. _Or_ —and this is crazy, but please hear me out—you order your own milkshake and everyone’s happy. Bones doesn’t even have to know.”

Spock blinks very slowly as Jim grins at him.

“So what’s it going to be, Mr. Spock?”

Spock orders a milkshake. It is strawberry and a little too sweet, but it makes Jim smile.

The human begins to droop not long after. He moves to Spock’s side of the booth, popping Spock’s discarded strawberry into his mouth, speaking quietly even as his eyes start to close . It does not take long before Jim’s head is resting against Spock’s shoulder, much the same as it did at the party not two days before. 

Jim’s breaths begin to even out and Spock relaxes into the booth. They should leave soon, he knows. Despite his meteorological readings to the contrary, storm clouds had continued to gather on their way into town, and Spock can already hear the winds picking up. But he sits there a moment longer, enjoying the warmth of Jim’s cheek against his shoulder and watching the neon lights color the world red.

Something tickles the back of his mind, so light it may as well be an itch in his scalp. He would reach up to scratch it if it weren't that it would disturb Jim. He wills it away instead, though it persists, like there’s something beneath his skin. 

And then, so sudden and so violent that his head snaps back and he has to suppress a cry of pain, there’s one, gigantic

 _tug_.

Spock bolts upright, startling Jim awake.

“Wha—” he begins, but Spock is already pulling on his jacket, working his way out the booth.

“We are leaving,” he says, ignoring the hurt on Jim’s face. “Retrieve your belongings.”

He pays swiftly at the counter and closes his eyes as the neon shines brighter, casting the restaurant in bloody crimson.

It must have been Jim, Spock thinks as they make their way to the car. It had to be. His sleeping mind must have found the link, crept upon it as he nodded off, conjured a shallow dream to explain its presence and, not quite sleeping and not quite waking, given an almighty tug.

Spock starts the car and Jim blinks at him from the passenger seat. He opens his mouth as if to speak, then seems to change his mind and turns away. The neon lights his profile; even his eyes are red with it.

He had been so careful since the party. Spock had felt a similar tug that night as he sat with Jim, the barest sensation at the back of his mind. He assumed it came from proximity and a crack in his walls and had left immediately to reinforce his shields. It seemed to work and, before departing for San Francisco, Spock had vowed to never let it happen again.

This one had felt different. Stronger and almost like an intrusion. Like a hand had reached into his cranium and wrapped its fingers around his brain stem. Like it had pulled it out with the weeds. Spock shivers as he recalls the sensation, his knuckles turning white as he grips the steering wheel.

He will meditate once they return to the farmhouse. He will cast out phantom threads and phantom hands and he will forbid all psychic intrusions. And, if he is disciplined enough and his mind merciful, he will not dream tonight.

The winds don’t really start to pick up until after they get back. Jim had noticed the clouds earlier, how they were the same color as rose leaves eaten away by stomach acid, and he instructs Spock to park the car in the barn right before the hail starts.

“We should stay on the ground floor,” he yells at Spock, gesturing toward the farmhouse. “I’ll go find the emergency kit.”

The Vulcan nods and Jim pulls his jacket tighter around himself as he hurries toward the shed. It’s not until he’s prying the doors open that the sirens finally start. 

Lightning flashes above and the wailing rises higher and he can feel his lips twist upward as he grabs the kit and turns to leave.

Jim’s grinning by the time he gets back inside, shaking the water from his hair like a dog. His smile falters when he spots Spock sitting stiffly on the couch, somehow turned small in the dim room.

“We had a lot of these growing up,” he says, plopping down on the other side, wary of getting too close again. “Mostly they pass through the neighboring county, maybe give us a glance on the way. We can use the cellar if it gets too close. It has twenty third century reinforcements and everything.”

Spock nods, though his eyes are unfocused. “I had intended to meditate upon our return.”

“Oh,” Jim says, decidedly not wincing at the brusque tone. “That's fine. I won’t bother you if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“I did not wish to appear rude.”

“No worries. I've got books I can read.”

The sirens continue wailing, the winds beating against the door demanding entrance, and Jim finds himself reading the same words over and over again. He takes off his glasses and rubs his eyes before turning to look at Spock, who’s still nestled into the couch’s other end. He’s tense, shoulders held straight and eyes clenched shut, tucked into himself like a stitch wrapped too tight. Even the soft glow of the lamp turns hard as it falls on him.

Jim sighs and moves himself to the recliner. It’s good enough for sleeping in if it comes to that, though he prays it won’t. He knows from experience that storms only make nightmares worse, and the idea of Spock witnessing one—Jim would rather run out the back door and brave the elements alone than let his friend see the aftermath of his recent dreams. Hell, maybe the Weeping Man will be out there and put him out of his misery.

Not even a full day with Spock and he’s already alienated the guy. Already made an idiot of himself, already ruined the hesitant truce between them. He should have stayed on his side of the booth, should have kept himself awake, should never have burdened Spock with his illogical human needs.

He’d been tired. And cold, though that didn’t discourage him from his milkshake goals. And he’d been so happy to have Spock there and that he was drinking a strawberry milkshake at Lois’ Diner in the middle of Riverside, Iowa and that he was smiling at him. But the warmth it ignited was small and fleeting and he feared it would go out completely, so he’d slipped into the other side. He thought, as he went, that he might be trembling, though he knows Spock would have said something if he was.

And then he must have fallen asleep because suddenly Spock was standing and telling Jim to get his things, stiff and cold and unwilling to meet his eyes.

Jim groans and pulls out his comm. He starts and deletes and restarts a message to Bones five times before he gives up and decides he can yell at his friend in the morning. 

Spock hasn’t moved, almost eerie in his stillness, and the winds still shake the house. Sighing, Jim gets up to find some sheets and get ready for sleep. It certainly won’t be the worst night he’s spent in this house.

The dreams are different that night. Worse, just as Jim knew they would be, but stranger too.

Spock’s there in the corner, just as he was when Jim fell asleep, and for a moment he thinks he’s not dreaming at all.

But he can see the shadow there above him, cast onto the ceiling. The lamp’s still on but the light flickers like it’s a flame, the shadow moving with it, and then moving on its own. One shadowed arm grows and a hand reaches toward Spock. 

Spock, who’s still meditating. Who still has his eyes closed.

Jim starts to scream. It’s going to get him, it’s grasping for him now, and why won’t Spock just open his eyes? But the sirens are wailing again, and Jim shouts as loud as he can but is still silent in the din.

Fingers wrap around Spock’s neck and, just as the tornado lets out its roar and the very earth seems to upheave, his head pops off.

Spock’s body stays where it is, still tense and still angry, and Jim can only cry as his head flies through the room.

When Jim wakes, there’s a cold light leaking in from the window, the dawn of a cloudy day. Shadows play upon the wall and Spock is nowhere to be seen.

“You could have at least warned me, you know. Maybe then I wouldn’t have answered the door in my underwear.”

“Like that’s ever bothered you before. You used to tell me your skinny ass was God’s greatest gift.”

“Bones,” Jim sighs as leans against the kitchen counter. Spock was still nowhere to be seen, and Jim had taken the opportunity to call up his friend.

“Alright, I’m sorry. I just didn’t want you out there by yourself. I know you and I know you wouldn’t tell me if something went wrong.”

“Sure would have. I promised, didn’t I?”

“You sure did. So tell me, Jim, have you had any attacks since you’ve been there?”

“Nope.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“It was just a few petals.”

“See? This is what I mean. And what if it had been worse? What if it had been an entire flower and no one was around to help?”

“You’re the one who didn’t want me seeing Spock in the first place. You practically threw a fit the last time I talked to him.”

“But you didn’t have an attack. And I took your readings while your back was turned, and your cortisol levels had actually dropped. My working theory is that pining for Spock increases your cortisol levels, which in turn increases the likelihood of an attack. and, whether you like it or not, being around Spock gives you a nice serotonin boost. As long as you stay calm, your chances of an attack are practically zero.”

“And if you’re wrong?”

“Then at least you won’t be by yourself in the middle of nowhere with no one to take you to the hospital.”

“I hate you.”

“I hate you, too. How’s it going over there anyways?”

Jim sighs as he runs his hand through his hair. “I think Spock’s mad at me.”

“How can you tell?”

“He barely talked to me after dinner last night and I haven’t seen him at all today. If his stuff weren’t still here, I'd think he already left.”

“He’s just in one of his moods. Probably wandered into the forest to talk to the trees or whatever it is that elves do.”

“Yeah, well. Maybe I should go find him."

“Alright, I’ll let you go. Just don’t do anything stupid. And tell Spock to get over himself. He isn’t goddamn Thranduil.”

“Will do,” Jim says, laughing. “Tell Jo I said hi.”

Jim shivers as he hangs up, his breath blooming into white puffs of fog. He hadn’t noticed the cold creep in, but it wraps itself around him now, and his hands shake as he brings up the house controls on his padd. It's that unique kind of cold, the kind that’s dogged him since he got here, that dogged him after Tarsus. The kind that only comes from dramatic weight loss. It gnaws at bones already picked clean by hunger, chills the heart and the mind and the joints until it all comes to a grinding halt. 

“Fuck,” he mutters as he jabs at the pad. The controls won’t respond to him. He pulls on a jacket and some shoes and heads out the door.

It doesn’t take long to find Spock. He’s down by the creek, bent over as if he’s studying something on the ground. Jim pauses as he approaches, watching the back of his friend’s head. If he closes his eyes, he can still see Spock’s head from last night’s dream, the way his mouth fell open as it tumbled onto the floor. The white spores that came out.

“You alright, Spock?” he finally calls.

The Vulcan startles and spins around, eyes blown wide.

“Jim,” he says. “I must apologize. I wished to study the damage caused by the storm and found myself preoccupied with the native plant life.” He glances back down, eyes alight with curiosity. “This specimen is of particular interest to me.”

Jim walks closer until he can see the blue flower covering the base of the willow tree. “Oh, bluebells. They’re Sam’s favorite. Or they used to be. I guess I don’t know what his favorite is anymore.”

Spock tilts his head, attention now focused on Jim. “Who is Sam?”

“Uh, my brother. Haven’t seen him in about sixteen years.”

“I see,” Spock says, nodding. “These flowers—bluebells, as you call them—bear a striking resemblance to the lap’ras of Vulcan. I find myself surprised they weathered the storm as well as they did.”

“Yeah,” Jim says, smiling as Spock leans closer. “They’re resilient little guys. Especially the wild ones.”

“Indeed,” Spock whispers, eyes still intent on the flowers. 

“I’ll tell you what, Spock. You can take as many as you like and pot them in the house if you want to study them. Let’s just get inside. It’s fucking freezing out here.”

Spock glances up in surprise. “You are certain?”

“Yeah,” Jim laughs. “Just hurry before you freeze your ears off.

The wind blows harsh against them as they walk back. Spock’s eyes are riveted on his find, hands clasped tight around the stems, glancing up only when Jim trips over the uneven earth.

“Where is your brother, Jim?”

“Oh, uh,” Jim says as he straightens himself, trembling almost violently now. “I don’t know, really. He used to talk about going off planet, but I haven’t heard from him since he left. I guess he could be anywhere.”

Spock nods and offers an arm in assistance. Jim shakes him off.

“And your mother?”

Jim snorts. “Who knows? Somewhere near Orion the last I heard.”

“Has she not been informed of your condition?”

“I’m sure the news has reached her by now,” Jim says, shrugging.

Spock frowns. “I do not understand. I am sure Starfleet would have gladly provided transport back to Earth, especially given your celebrity status. Why has she not yet taken advantage of it? Is she on a top priority mission?”

“I can’t really say, Spock. Hey, the house controls weren’t working when I tried turning up the heat earlier—probably something to do with the storm. There should be some dry wood in the barn we can use for a fire.”

“Allow me to retrieve it,” Spock says, handing Jim the bluebells. “Please return to the house and start to get warm.”

Jim tucks the flowers into his jacket and pulls at the lapels. “Thanks,” he whispers.

The lock’s still broken, but Jim’s hands are shaking too hard to open the door anyways. He kicks it open and practically falls into the kitchen chair, groaning as he lays his head on the table.

A few minutes pass before he hears the door open again.

“Jim?”

“Mmph.”

“Are you well?”

“Yeah,” he mumbles into the table, eyes screwed tight against tears. “Just been doing too much, I think.”

“I will start the fire.”

Jim tries to get up and help, but his limbs feel leaden. He needs to do something with the bluebells. Needs to get them out of his jacket before his nose starts running, the same way it used to when Sam braided them into Jackie’s mane. Frank sold Jackie not long after Sam left and he wonders where she ended up.

A hand lands on Jim’s shoulder and he jumps.

“Jim? Do you require assistance?”

Jim wants to say no. No, Spock shouldn’t have to touch him anymore than he already has. He opens his mouth to say it, but nothing comes out.

Spock pulls gently at his shoulder and Jim’s helpless to stop him as he raises him from the table. Swallowing, he opens his eyes and sees Spock’s brows furrowed, a small moue of concern on his face. Jim’s lips twitch as he remembers that day at the Academy when they first met, when he had a rose caught in his throat and somehow Spock had been there to save him.

Something brushes against his leg and Jim looks down to see that the bluebells have fallen out of his jacket. They’re crushed, petals scattering around the fallen stems, and Jim realizes he must have been sitting with them pressed against the table. His face falls.

“I’m sorry, Spock,” he whispers. “I’m so sorry.”

“It is a small matter, Jim,” Spock says as he puts a hand to Jim’s forehead. “I can collect more.”

Jim pulls back, shaking his head. “I’m sorry you have to be here. I’m sorry you have to touch me. I'm sorry I keep touching you and making you angry.”

“I am not angry,” Spock says, his lips pulling downward. “I did not intend for you to receive that impression.”

Sighing, Jim tries to turn away, to push Spock away despite his trembling hands, but his friend stays where he is.

“I wish to ask you something, Jim.”

“Yeah?” Jim says, still pushing weakly against his hold.

“Why is your mother not here?”

Jim stills. “What?”

“Why does she not visit? Or your brother? Surely they wish to see you regardless of what may have happened in the past.”

“It’s complicated, Spock.”

“I am no stranger to complicated familial relationships. My father and I were estranged for many years and it was only the death of my mother and the destruction of our home planet that allowed us to reconcile.”

“I know, Spock. I’m sorry.”

“Perhaps such a thing is also possible for you and your family.”

“Can we talk about something else? I don’t think you get what I’m—”

“Jim,” Spock says, eyes black in their intensity. “There is not a day that goes by that I do not miss my mother. That I do not regret never having told her that I love her. Whatever it is that stands between you and reconciling with your family, I can assure you that it is not as insurmountable as you believe. Perhaps if you contacted your mother—”

“I’m leaving,” Jim says, standing swiftly despite the trembling in his legs.

“I— Excuse me?”

“I’m leaving. I’m going to take one of the old bikes out for a spin.” Spock stands as if to stop him, but Jim’s already pulled on an extra jacket and is making his way out the door. “Don’t fucking wait up.”

The wind blows right through him as he walks to the barn and he scrubs angrily at the tears on his cheeks. He never should have let Spock stay here in the first place, never should have let him darken the already darkened doorstep, to stay in this house where the only things still living are the ones growing out of his lungs.

He chooses the oldest of the bikes, a rusted Harley that runs more on spite than petrol, and it roars into life in the same moment that thunder cracks through the sky.

Of course Spock didn’t understand. How could he, when his parents had loved him, when he was someone worth loving? Jim wasn’t someone people loved. He was someone they left behind, and that’s probably what would kill him in the end: love unrequited and flowers burst through his chest.

A yell tears from his throat and is lost to the darkening sky above. He rides until he can’t feel his fingers or his face or the heart beating in his chest. He rides until his thoughts become short and his joints stiff and even the bike starts to sputter with exhaustion.

But he can still feel the roots. Even as he pulls up at the Shipyard Bar, body numb and mind swept away in the winds, he can still feel the roots growing in his lungs, fed by hurt and cold and his love.

Meditation does little to allay Spock’s anxiety. He takes to pacing instead, counting the steps it takes to traverse the living room. His tricorder glows when he pulls it out to check the meteorological readings—he does not believe it to be malfunctioning, but he can still find nothing to substantiate the storm that is brewing outside—and the fire pops and cracks, loud in its attempt to warm the old house.

Jim left five point six seven hours ago and has yet to return, the dirt road quiet even as the sky turns from grey to black. Spock watches the world darken, worry rising inside him like a flare, his heart pounding a little harder.

It is quiet here in the country and Spock finds that he would almost prefer to be in San Francisco among the noise and commotion, among the shouts and the laughter and the trains that run late. He had considered his life in the city to be a solitary one, consumed by work and meditation and the dreams he tried and failed to control, but even then he had not felt truly alone. Not as he does now.

Jim has left him, angry for reasons that Spock does not understand. The winds, however impossible they may be, beat against the house, the bluebells cry petals, and there is a strange thumping coming from upstairs. 

_thump thump thump_

A very strange thumping that Spock, dismissing it as a result of the wind, had been attempting to ignore.

_thump thump thump_

Now, as the wind settles and the sound increases in volume, he must admit that it is very likely not the wind.

_THUMP_

Spock’s eyes shoot upward and he frowns as he considers the possibilities. It sounds as if it is coming from Jim’s room, the childhood bedroom Jim seems to avoid, though Spock cannot guess why. And it is loud, far too loud to be made by a rodent or any other animal that may have sought shelter from the storm.

It is unlikely that an intruder could have found their way in. Spock had noted upon his arrival that the lock on the front door had broken, but his hearing is acute enough that he would have noticed before now if someone had entered without permission. Nonetheless, he pauses by his bag and pulls out a phaser before heading toward the stairs.

_thump thump thump_

His foot lands with a creak and the thumping comes to an abrupt halt. The silence looms huge above him and Spock must take a deep breath before his next step, wincing as the wood whines under his weight.

The door, when he comes upon it, is slightly ajar, and Spock opens it with a slow push. He blinks into the darkness for a moment before switching on the light.

There is nothing. Nothing but an old room and the shadow Spock casts.

_thump_

Frowning, Spock turns to face the wall. A diverse array of posters covers the whitewashed wood, testimony to an entire childhood spent in one room. One poster he notices before the rest, not because the content is of particular interest—it advertises an old film titled _Godzilla_ and is surrounded by other posters emblazoned with similarly pulpy examples of science fiction—nor because of any outstanding stylistic feature. 

It is because it is moving. Because, though it is fastened securely to the wall, the poster rises and falls as if impelled by breaths.

Spock hesitates only a moment before he is moving forward, phaser raised, tearing the poster from the wall. _Godzilla_ flutters to the floor as he peers into the newly revealed hole.

Two eyes stare back. They are wide and blue. The same startling blue as Jim’s.

 _Illogical_ , Spock thinks. And then, as the mouth begins to open, _Impossible_.

It is impossible that a creature from Janus III—a “bush baby,” as they had come to be known—could have found its way to Earth. Impossible that it could be here in Iowa, that it could be living in the walls and could smile at him as it is doing now, with Jim’s eyes looking up at him and with wide and white teeth.

Spock blinks and, in the brief dark of his eyelids, is back on Janus III, frozen in fear as the bush babies rush them, unable to protect himself and unable to save Jim.

The creature moves and Spock staggers back, shaking violently as his phaser falls to the floor. It disappears deeper into the wall, and Spock registers distantly that it is not alone; there is also food hidden behind the wood, wrapped and dusty and clearly not subject to the creature’s appetite, and Spock would find it very perplexing if he were not preoccupied with the other thing hiding in the dark.

It is simply not possible. The walls are too thin to accommodate a bush baby; even as Spock witnessed the thing exist in the confines of the planks, it made no physical sense. And the creatures cannot survive for extended periods without seeking nutrients from the soil. There is no way it could have made its way to Earth, to Riverside, and to the thin walls of the farmhouse, and still be alive.

Even as Spock thinks this, even as he rushes down the stairs and into the living room, his body shakes, and he runs his hands over his arms, chasing away phantom fingers. 

It is not until his comm goes off that Spock realizes he is sitting on the floor. Some time has passed and he breathes deeply before pulling the comm out, eyes scanning the message.

_at the Shipyard Bar. might not be back tonight, so don’t wait up._

Spock stares at the words for some time, long enough that the thumping starts again.

_thump thump thump_

In truth, he is too scared to move, and when he does finally, it is only to brush away the spider that has crawled onto his knee. He watches as she rages against his touch before hurrying under the couch. And he wonders, if he were to ask, what she would tell him about this house.

It’s country music night at the Shipyard Bar and it only takes a few “yeehaw”s and one or two “howdy”s before Jim starts to feel his toes again.

The bartender smiles at him as he takes a seat and Jim smiles right back. The place must be under new management. It’s lost that skeevy atmosphere that Jim remembers so fondly, the one that colors so many of his youthful memories. He’s almost disappointed; he’d been determined to spend the evening feeling sorry for himself.

The first drink starts to kick in at the same time the lights lower and Jim thinks that maybe this place will do just fine.

He steals a cowboy hat from someone—either the bartender or the guy with the fringe jacket, he’s not sure which. Something bright blue is poured into his glass and Jim takes this brief moment of sobriety to message Spock and let him know he’s safe. He fully intends to be raging drunk before the night is through.

It’s not long before he’s on the dancefloor, searching the bodies for one that fits well with his own, smiling at every eye he meets. He ends back up with Mr. Fringe Jacket and they dance for a while, even after the music turns slow and Jim finds his eyes falling closed, feet dragging as they move in time. 

He’s pretty sure he’s wearing Mr. Fringe Jacket’s hat (the fringe matches up and everything), but the guy’s kind enough not to mention it, just holds him as they sway together. Jim could probably go home with him if he wanted. He did, after all, tell Spock that he might not be back that night, and his bed’s probably warmer than the one Jim’s going to sleep in. And it’s not in an old bedroom where he used to hide food because he couldn’t stand to go to bed hungry.

His knees start to ache after the third song and he dismisses the idea. He’s too tired for sex. His body fatigues too easily and his ribs stick out a little too far, and so he lets the guy hold him, lets the warmth of his body wrap around him as he rests his head on his shoulder. Mr. Fringe Jacket doesn’t complain, and Jim thinks he probably owes him a drink or two.

“Jim.”

Jim startles slightly and looks up into Spock’s eyes. He seems paler than usual, but that may just be the neon.

“Uh,” he says.

“Jim, I am sorry to disturb you, but there is something urgent we must discuss.”

“Who’s this guy?” Mr. Fringe Jacket asks, stepping away to look at Spock. “Look, if two are together, I don’t want to be part of some kind of jealousy ploy.”

“Nope,” Jim says quickly. “Just a friend. But hey, I should probably take off. Thanks for the dance.”

The guy looks a little put out, but he shrugs. “Sure. You can keep the hat. It suits you.” 

“Thanks!” Jim calls, nearly toppling over as he waves goodbye. He spins back toward Spock with a grin. “You want to try my new hat, Spock?”

“No, thank you. Jim, please, we must talk. I just had a very disturbing experience at the farmhouse.”

“What?” Jim says, tripping a little as Spock drags him toward the exit. “Did my mom show up or something?”

“It was not your mother, no. We can discuss it on the way back. Suffice it to say that I found something in the walls of your old bedroom.”

They’ve already made it outside and Jim halts in his tracks, the chill suddenly reaching all the way to his bones.

“Oh,” he says, and he takes a step back. “You mean the food?”

“The foo— Yes, there was food,” Spock says, turning to face him. His head is tilted slightly, brow furrowed. “That is not what I am referring to.”

“That stuff’s from years ago, alright? I don’t do that anymore.”

“Jim, I am not concerned about the food. Please, I have already loaded your bike into the back of the car. If you would—”

“No,” Jim says, because the chill’s suddenly wrapped around his throat and he can feel panic rising in his chest. “You need to understand. He wouldn’t feed me. It was like some kind of punishment. And I wrote to Mom about it because I thought she would care or feel guilty or something, but she didn’t. She never wrote back. So I hid it in the walls.”

He takes another step back and then another. Another and then he hits the building, the cold brick scraping against his neck. Spock moves toward him, and he’d take another step back if he could.

“Jim. As I said, I am not concerned about the food. Will you please explain to me the reason for your distress?”

Jim shakes his head, fingers digging into the wall behind him. He can’t. He can’t explain it. He can’t explain why he avoids that room, why he still hears the rustle of chip bags, the soft scratching from the time the mice got in and ate his entire stash. Or how he used to imagine maggots crawling through the wood, the same way they crawled through Ruby Parson’s eyes when he found her in the forest. Or how he used to dream about that hole in the wall, about a head coming through, and how it always belonged to Kodos. 

Kodos, who had made himself small and then grown big again and who had that same look he did in all of Jim’s dreams—that of a spider watching its web.

He can’t explain any of this, but he opens his mouth so that maybe he can explain _something_ , and only then does he realize that there’s a flower in his throat.

Strong arms wrap around him as he bends over. Distantly, in between the gagging, he thinks that Spock’s going to want to preserve this thing for study, and so he pulls his hat off just in time for the petals—yellow, with spots of blood, and unmistakably those of a sunflower—to tumble in.

“Fuck,” he spits and he’s not sure if it’s the exhaustion or the pain in his lungs or the unending realization that this is never going to end that finally brings him to his knees.

Of course it was sunflowers. Between Spock’s questions and being in this town and in that house, Jim should have expected it, should have known the sunflowers would start blooming again. He had never stopped loving Winona and Winona had never stopped not loving him. His body could only react accordingly.

“Can you stand?” Spock asks, hands rubbing along Jim’s back. “I believe it would be best if we moved to the car.”

Jim nods but his legs won’t move and Spock sweeps him up a moment later, arms tight as Jim’s body starts to shake.

“Don’t forget the hat,” he whispers.

Spock sets him in the passenger seat before turning back to the building, and Jim gasps when the cold hits him, already missing the warmth of Spock’s body. It takes a moment for him to return and he places the hat on Jim’s lap.

“We will be home soon, Jim,” the Vulcan whispers, hand ghosting along Jim’s face.

The world spins a little, the way it often does when a flower’s just pillaged his iron levels. Jim nods and blinks away tears. The stars, streaked and blurred above him, look a little like flowers and Jim almost reaches for his glasses, thinking he’ll need them if he wants to keep looking at the sky.

The clouds overtake them not long after, and the sky is completely overcast by the time Spock’s pulling up into the barn. 

“I believe you are feverish,” Spock says after depositing Jim on the couch. The fire’s going again, and long shadows play upon his face. “I will attempt to contact Dr. McCoy.”

“No!” Jim cries—or tries to cry, though his voice is barely above a whisper. “Please don’t.”

Spock frowns down at him. “Jim, you are ill.”

“I don’t want to go back to the hospital.”

“You will not have to.” He bends down next to Jim and pushes a stray lock of hair from his face. “But I must speak with the doctor. He will know the best way to treat you.”

“Don’t tell him about the flower.”

“Jim—”

“Please, Spock. He’ll drop everything just to come out here.”

“Perhaps that would be for the best.”

“No,” Jim whispers and reaches up to grab Spock’s wrist. The Vulcan pulls away, fingers slipping out of Jim’s hand, eyes lingering for just a moment.

“It will be alright,” Spock says and he’s gone before Jim can say another word.

Fuck, it can’t be another infection. He can’t survive another one, can’t do that in front of Spock. What if he starts talking again, starts babbling about flowers and food and holes in the wall?

A chill wracks him, hard and painful, and Jim wants to cry. No, what he really wants is to get out of this house. The structure groans around him as he twists in the sheets, and he’s too dizzy to find the ground and too weak to walk out the door. This place is poison to everything but flowers and he doesn’t know why he ever decided to come back.

The room seems darker now, and Jim wonders how much time has passed. Maybe Spock left. Maybe Jim’s dying and he’s going to be alone when it happens. Really alone, not like last time. Maybe it will feel like tripping, like the wrong foot on the bottom stair and the creak it makes and the horror that opens like a maw.

And even though he’s been dead before, he wonders if he could fall into another place. If, when his body rushes toward the ground, he could slip through whatever it is that separates universes and find himself in another one. A universe where his body’s not falling apart and flowers don’t grow in his lungs like he’s already dead and decomposing. A universe where Spock loves him back.

He had felt it in the meld with the other Spock. Back in that icy cave where the Ambassador had reached toward him with fingers like claws and a mind like the sea, he had felt how much he loved his own Jim. Loved him more than anything in the universe—two universes, really, because the Ambassador had found himself here in a reality where the stars were not quite right and Vulcan was missing from the sky and had loved his Jim all the more.

Even then, back in the cave and still in the grips of the meld, Jim had wondered what was so different about this universe, so different about the stars and the stuff Jim was made of that meant that Spock didn’t love him. What was so different about him?

He supposes the answer’s here in this house. The emptiness of it, the way it creaks with hunger. Because Jim knows about hunger, how it stunts the body and the mind, how cold and hard the world becomes without a fatty cushion between it and the bones. And he knows how mean people become when they can’t remember their last warm meal.

Jim must have lost something. Maybe it wasn’t Tarsus. Maybe it wasn’t Winona or Sam or even Frank, but somewhere between here and there, he lost whatever it was that made Spock love him. Something broke and it can’t be replaced.

Fingers brush against his forehead and he hears the click of a hypo. Jim opens his eyes to look up at Spock, the Vulcan’s face shadowed by the dying fire.

There’s someone behind him. Of course there is; there’s alway someone these days, and right now it’s the Weeping Man. He’s on all-fours this time, like Andrew Leighton’s been dead too long to remember his own shape. He's tall, and Jim realizes he’s replaced his femurs with branches. His arm bones are gone too, and he leans over Spock with a neck that’s too long, as if he’s been collecting vertebrae and lost count.

Jim opens his mouth to scream. Spock hasn’t noticed him yet, and he needs to warn him, needs to tell him that the Weeping Man is right behind him and reaching for his neck. But then Jim sees the face. 

It’s a child’s face, small and round with features not yet formed, and the skin sags with decomposition. But Jim still recognizes it. He recognizes it because it’s little Morgan Brown, the first of his kids who disappeared into the forest. “The fungus got them,” Tommy had said, and Jim didn’t know what that meant.

Morgan’s hair hangs long around his face as childish lips twist into a smile. He raises a finger made of bone and presses it to his lips.

The scream dies in Jim’s throat, coming out as a gurgle. Spock’s eyes seem to grow darker as he frowns down at him, and then Jim realizes it’s because the sedative has kicked in and the world is going black.

The house shakes with the rage of the storm, the old wood groaning as the winds beat against it. Spock glances warily upward; the thumping has not returned, but the house is loud tonight, and he cannot help but see movement out of every corner.

Jim’s condition has not changed. Even after the administered hypos, Jim’s temperature hovers stubbornly at 103 degrees Fahrenheit and his mind seems to be caught in a delirium. His condition seems to have only deteriorated and, illogical though it may be, Spock is inclined to assign the blame to this house. Or, at the very least, to the impossible creature that has taken up residence inside.

He had not mentioned this to Dr. McCoy during their brief conference. The doctor, though often irrational and ruled by emotion, is a man of science and Spock did not believe he would respond well to the suggestion of things supernatural—if supernatural is indeed the correct description for what Spock witnessed. He still is not sure.

“Sorry,” the doctor had said after the video blinked out only a few seconds into the call. “Must be interference on your side. Everything looks fine over here.”

“We are experiencing a freak tornado,” Spock replied. “This is the only reason I have not yet taken the captain to the hospital.”

“Hospital? What happened?”

“He has developed a high fever and appears to be delirious.”

“Did you send over the tricorder readings?”

“Yes. They should arrive momentarily.”

There was a cheerful _ding!_ and McCoy lapsed into silence as he studied the data. Spock, who had found the reception to be slightly better in the kitchen, glanced warily toward his captain. He was still on the sofa, still grunting softly as he twisted in the sheets.

“I think we can rule out an infection,” the doctor announced.

Spock frowned. “How can you be so sure?”

“My guess is it’s a nasty rhinovirus taking advantage of his weakened immune system. Probably best to just sit tight for now.”

“You do not believe it will be necessary to escort him to the hospital?”

“My advice is to stay there. Kid's gotta rebuild his immunity somehow, and this is the perfect place to start.”

Spock paused as he considered his next words, remembering the plea in Jim’s voice. “There is something else.”

“Of course there is. This wouldn’t be Jim Kirk we’re talking about if there weren’t.”

“Indeed,” Spock said, eyes traveling once more to Jim’s still form on the sofa. “The captain also experienced the emesis of a flower earlier this evening.”

“Oh.”

“I must assume that this is a chronic condition, as I do recall the captain experiencing something similar upon our first acquaintance at the Academy.”

“God, that feels like a million years ago.”

Spock had nodded, though the doctor could not see. He could still recall coming upon the man, the stranger who had been rapidly dying, and knocking gently at his mind before entering. By Vulcan standards the meld had been little more than basic CPR; it was shallow and kept as brief as possible, but even then Spock had felt something compel him to stay.

“Well, that settles it,” the doctor said. “Keep him where he is. His white blood cell count is going to be fucked for a few days, and I don’t want to risk exposing him to anything.”

“You are certain?” Spock asked. In truth, he intended to leave as soon as the storm ended, whether their destination be the hospital or elsewhere. He did not wish to stay in this house a moment longer than was necessary. Every time he closed his eyes he saw the face in the wall, the mix of blood and mud and the stark white of its teeth. “I would feel more comfortable if he were under professional care.”

“NO!” 

Spock jumped, blinking in surprise. The entire house seemed to shake with the shout, and for a moment the line devolved into static, echoing the roar of the storm outside. Spock glanced back toward the living room as he waited for the noise to clear, frowning when he noticed something smeared on the wall near the staircase, something small and brown that looked almost like—

“Sorry,” the doctor as the line came back on. “Joanna just ran past with a pair of scissors. What were we talking about?”

“We— You were advising me against taking Jim to the hospital,” Spock said, halting in his steps. “I must admit that I am surprised by your lack of concern. The captain was rather adamant that I not inform you about the flowers in fear that you would insist upon coming to administer care yourself.”

The doctor sighed. “I’m always concerned, Spock. But I think he needs rest more than anything right now. Try an antipyretic and an iron supplement and he should start coming ‘round.”

“Doctor,” Spock said slowly, taking another step toward the living room, “do you recall what it was Jim said to us upon waking from his coma?”

“Not really, no. He was pretty out of it, wouldn’t even talk at first. Wasn’t it something about bumblebees?”

“Yes.” Spock took another step. “I believe you are correct. He made mention of something similar in his delirium.”

“That’s not surprising. His mind’s probably going back to the same place. Call me if things start to get worse, alright?”

“Yes,” Spock said, and then he was standing before the wall, and sure enough it was a handprint that he had noticed, small like a child’s, and brown like the familiar mix of blood and mud. 

“Yes, Doctor, I will inform you if we require your assistance.”

The communicator shut with a _snap!_ and the floor thudded with Spock’s feet as he ran back to Jim’s side, panic surging within him. If the creature had reached him, had harmed him in any way—

But Spock turned the corner and Jim was still there, still asleep and undisturbed except by his dreams. Spock nearly fell to the floor in relief, grasping Jim’s hand in a moment of weakness, requiring the touch to know that his friend was real.

That had been well over an hour ago. In the time since, Spock had kept vigilant watch over Jim’s sleeping form, jumping at shadows and replaying the events of the evening over in his mind. He cannot make sense of it and soon he discovers that the comm lines have gone down. His fingers ache as he clings to the tricorder; nominally, he is running environmental scans, but he also must admit that he finds some comfort in the machine’s soft glow.

“Spock?”

Jim’s voice startles Spock from his work. It is no more than a harsh whisper and, when Spock turns to face him, his eyes are still closed, face contorted in a nightmare.

“Spock,” he says again, the word a whimper. “Spock, please.”

For a moment, Spock is back in the radiation chamber, in the violent world of his dreams, and Jim is dying before him. He reaches out, then hesitates, worried that his hand might land like a fist.

“Please,” Jim says again, and Spock can’t stop himself. He rises and grabs his friend, shaking him awake.

“Jim,” he says in a tone almost as plaintive as the captain’s. “Wake up, please.”

His eyes fly open. They’re clear now, absent of delirium, but all the bluer for their tears.

“Spock,” he whispers, grasping tightly at the Vulcan’s arm. “Why did you leave?”

“I am right here, Jim”

“No, that’s not—” Jim shakes his head. “Why did you leave me? I needed you.”

Understanding comes with an awful twist of the stomach, and Spock stills. 

“I—I must apologize, Jim. My actions were rash, but I only meant to protect you.”

“How?” Jim asks. He looks up at Spock, eyes wide and tears streaming, and Spock knows he cannot lie. But neither can he tell the truth.

“I am sorry,” he says instead, softly because he knows it’s not enough.

Jim curls in on himself, body shaking as sobs wrack him, and he says: “What did I do, Spock? Why did you leave why did you leave _why did you leave_?”

For a moment, Spock can only watch, aghast at what he’s done. He had been so careful, so determined to spare Jim whatever pain he could, and yet his friend is here before him now, trembling with the hurt Spock caused. 

Jim lets out another sob, and Spock wraps his arms around him, determined to hold his friend until the tears stop, until his bones no longer rattle with grief. And Jim permits it, though he becomes tense at Spock’s touch and the sobs seem only to worsen.

Spock thinks of his mother. He remembers how she held him that night in his father’s study, and how he had found comfort there in her arms even when she did not know the reason for his tears. And so, even as the storm grows in its ferocity, he holds onto Jim all the tighter. 

They should relocate to the basement. It is the most logical course of action given their situation, but Spock’s thoughts keep staying upward to that room, to the face in the wall, and to the handprint by the stairs. He cannot help but feel that they have fallen into a trap, and he does not wish to wander deeper inside.

So he holds Jim instead, holds him until the sobs turn to hiccups and the shaking stops and his captain falls into sleep. Holds him until even the storm starts to rest and the house no longer shakes with its fury. 

Spock falls too in time, falls into a sleep uncolored by dreams and blood and the dark green of storm clouds.

When he wakes, it is only a short time later and it is to Jim moving beneath him. Spock remains still for a moment, enjoying the cool slide of skin, the beads of sweat from a broken fever. The winds are still blowing, but light has started to fill the room, and it is only when he notices Jim blinking into the pale glow of morning that Spock startles up.

“Jim!” he says, hands reaching out to assist his friend. “I must apologize. I did not intend to fall asleep.”

“Um,” Jim says as he struggles to sit. “It–it’s alright. I didn’t mean to—well, you know.” He gestures vaguely. “Do any of that.”

His hands keep moving and Spock watches with a tilt of his head. “I do not blame you for falling ill. Nor for your emotional compromise. In fact, it is only to be expected given the physical stress your body has lately endured.”

“Oh,” Jim says, though his eyes do not quite meet Spock’s. “OK. I guess that’s logical.”

“Indeed. There is, however, something urgent I must discuss with you.” Spock pauses to observe Jim’s pallor, the way his hands tremble slightly as he trains his eyes on the ground. “Please sit and I will replicate a morning meal. We will talk once you have eaten.” 

“I can get it,” Jim says, though he has slumped farther into the sofa and now stares down at his feet as if doing a rapid cost-benefit analysis on the subject of retrieving food.

“It will be no bother,” Spock assures him. He hurries to the kitchen and returns a few minutes later with a bowl of soup

“You made me chicken noodle?” Jim asks as Spock hands it to him.

“Is this an acceptable morning meal?”

“What? Oh, sure,” Jim says, grinning up at him. “Thank you. So what did you want to talk about?”

Spock straightens himself, watching as Jim forgoes the spoon and raises the bowl straight to his mouth. “I saw something in your old bedroom last night.”

Jim stops, coughing as he lowers the bowl to look at him. “Right. You mean the food.”

“Negative. There was—Jim, I saw one of the bush babies of Janus III in the wall of your bedroom.”

Jim’s eyebrows rise. “That’s not possible, Spock.”

“I agree. And yet that is what I saw. Jim, that wall is too small to hold such a creature. And I heard it run away, though there is no viable exit; it cannot enter another part of the house with the way the building is constructed. And as far as I am aware, those creatures cannot survive for long without seeking nutrients from the soil.”

“What are you saying?”

“I am saying that I have either taken leave of my senses—which is entirely possible, albeit unlikely—or there is something far stranger going on in this house.”

Jim’s food lays forgotten on his lap as he stares at Spock, mouth slightly agape. “Stranger how? You think this place is haunted?”

“I am not one to dismiss the things on heaven and Earth not dreamt up in my philosophy,” Spock says, shaking his head, “but I do not believe that ghosts are our problem. I believe it is far more likely that we are dealing with an intruder of this realm, one that may possess immense telepathic power.”

“That’s quite a leap.”

“It is. I have, however, found evidence to support this theory. For instance, the tornados. Jim, I have been taking meteorological readings since my arrival. These storms were not forecasted and there is no scientific cause for them. They should not exist.”

“Wait, so you’re saying these storms—like the one I can hear outside right now—aren’t real?”

“As unlikely as it may sound, that is what I believe.”

Jim shakes his head. “I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to go outside just to test your theory.”

“Nor do I. In fact, if these telepaths are as powerful as I believe them to be, it is likely we would experience these storms as if they are real.”

“OK,” Jim says slowly, “so we’re definitely stuck here, regardless of whether your theory’s correct.”

“I believe so, yes.”

“Do you have any other evidence to support this?”

Spock nods. “I spoke with Dr. McCoy last night.”

“Oh no.”

“Indeed. He spoke about your condition and made references to past incidents, such as the time you were hospitalized due to a rose in your trachea.”

“Oh boy.”

“But he was also adamant that we not leave the house. He preferred you to stay here rather than seek professional help.”

“That’s a little weird, I guess. What are you saying?”

“I am saying that the person I talked to last night was not Dr. McCoy. They may have used our memories to create a realistic auditory recreation, but it was not the doctor we know.”

“How can you be sure? You don’t know him as well as I do.”

“I asked him a question and he gave me the incorrect response.”

“Wait, what did you ask?”

“I asked him what your first words were upon waking from your coma. While doing so, I strongly projected the incorrect answer of ‘bumblebees,’ and this is the response he gave me.”

“What did I actually say?”

“It made little sense, but you asked me to meet you under the willow tree.”

Jim watches him for a long moment, blue eyes going distant as he takes a sip of his soup. “Alright. There’s at least one telepathic intruder in this house that has tapped into our minds to create a psychic trap. There may or may not be a storm brewing outside, the Bones you talked to last night was an imposter, and we can’t trust our own senses.” He sets his bowl down and returns his gaze to Spock. “I’d say we’ve faced worse odds. So what do you want to do about it?”

Spock’s lips twitch upward as he feels relief pass over him. “First, Jim, I must ask a question. Will you please explain the sunflower to me?”

“Of course you have to ask about that,” Jim sighs, running a hand down his face. “It’s a psychic condition. My body starts to grow flowers when I’m stressed. There’s a certain cortisol threshold it has to reach and that only happens when I’m thinking about someone I love. Someone who doesn’t love me back. I start longing for my unrequited love and suddenly I have their favorite flower growing in my lungs.”

“As I recall, the last person you mentioned before your attack last night was your mother.”

“Got it in one,” Jim responds, something bitter in his voice as he averts his eyes.

Spock stills. “I must apologize. I did not realize.”

“No, it’s alright,” Jim says, though he seems to blink harder as he returns his gaze to Spock. “There was no way for you to know.”

“Nonetheless, I am sorry. I cannot help but feel partly responsible for your attack.”

Jim snorts. “Seriously, don’t worry.”

“I must admit, however, that I am curious. I did not believe psi-null individuals were vulnerable psychic conditions.”

“Yeah, I’m a low-level empath. At least that’s what Bones thinks. It’s not something I notice very often.”

“You are an empath,” Spock says slowly, a frown tugging at his lips.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.”

Spock shakes his head. “Jim, precisely one point seven days ago, while we were at the diner, I felt a violent tug at the back of my mind.”

“What? You didn’t mention it.”

“At the time, I believed it to be you. I surmised that you had found access to a mental link and unconsciously attempted to use it. Now that we find ourselves in a psychic trap, I suspect that it was in fact the intruder who tugged at my mind.” Spock pauses to repress a shiver as he remembers the sensation of fingers reaching into his skull. “It may have been attracted by my telepathy, as well as your empathy. Especially if our minds have interacted.”

“That makes sense,” Jim says frowning. “Do you think meditation will help? Maybe you can isolate whatever’s in your head and start to parse reality from unreality?”

Spock nods. His previous attempts at meditation have been mostly unsuccessful and he can feel the strain from the last twenty four hours on his mind. He cannot protect himself, much less Jim, if he does not reinforce his shields.

“Perhaps. I am reluctant for us to separate, but I believe my meditation will be more successful in solitude. If I retire to the master bedroom, will you notify me if you require assistance?”

“You’re going to be about ten feet away,” Jim says, laughing. “Don’t worry about it, Spock.”

Spock’s lips twitch as he rises to collect his meditation mat and candles. He glances back at Jim, noting the soft smile on his face, and enters the room.

It’s probably the soup talking, but for a man living in a haunted house, Jim would say he’s doing pretty well. 

No bumps in the night, no ghostly apparitions (febrile visions notwithstanding), no running off on his own to play in the cornfields. If it weren’t for the fever and last night’s breakdown, he’d say he’s doing spectacularly even.

Of course, that was before he started coughing up teeth.

It starts, as all things seem to start these days, with a tickle in his throat. Jim glances toward the master bedroom—the door’s ajar and he can’t see Spock, but he can see one of his candles—and wonders if he should interrupt his friend’s meditations just to warn him of an incoming flower.

He watches the flame flicker for a moment, and the feeling passes. Maybe, just this once, if he’s very lucky, it really is no more than a tickle in the throat. Jim coughs quietly and gets up to make himself more soup.

It’s on the second sip that the first tooth comes out. It floats for a moment, buoyant among the noodles and almost the same color. Jim searches his mouth for gaps, but he knows already that the tooth is too small to be one of his own.

He sets his bowl down and glances back toward the bedroom. It’s still a little early to go bothering Spock.

Another tickle and Jim starts hacking. A second tooth comes out and then a third, and Jim’s rising to his feet, intent on the bedroom door, because this is definitely not good. 

He’s only a few feet away when the door opens and Spock walks through. More time must have passed than Jim realized because the Vulcan’s face is about as blank as he’s ever seen it, as if he’s just spent hours in meditation.

“Spock,” Jim gasps. He can already feel another tooth working its way up his throat. “We have a problem.”

An elegant eyebrow rises above eyes that seem a shade too dark. “I would not describe it as my problem, as I am about to make my departure.”

“What?” Jim sputters between coughs. “Are you serious?”

“Indeed. After evaluating all the facts, I have disregarded my earlier hypothesis and have determined that there is a logical explanation for the strange occurrences in this house. In fact, I find myself rather embarrassed to have indulged in such an impossible fancy.”

A tooth comes out and skitters along the floor, but Jim hardly notices. “You have to be kidding me. You’re the one who said it’s too dangerous to leave.”

“The storm has started to calm and I have already booked the earliest flight to San Francisco.”

“Y-You practically invited yourself. You said you _wanted_ to be here.”

“And now I want to leave,” Spock says dismissively. “My desires have changed and I have duties to attend to in San Francisco.”

“Sp—” Jim starts, but the word gets caught in his throat. What had he done? Between the touching and the fever and the dreams, he must have done something, crossed some invisible line. He must have violated something sacred and silent, something that can explain why Spock’s looking at him like a stranger.

Spock moves to walk past and Jim staggers after him, a hand reaching for his shoulder.

“Spock, please,” Jim says, but Spock keeps moving and his hand misses, falling on empty air. “Please don’t go.”

The Vulcan pauses to collect his luggage, face turned away.

“I'm sorry, Spock,” Jim says, voice breaking. He can feel something rising in him, anger or grief or a storm about to blow out his lungs. “I don’t know what I did, but I’m sorry.”

“You did nothing,” Spock says, turning to regard him. “I simply do not love you.”

Jim freezes. He thinks the world freezes with him, the molecules in the air still and suffocating as he whispers, “You know?”

“Of course,” Spock says and something like disgust crosses his face. “How could I not? You spent the night whimpering my name.”

“No, Spock, I didn’t—I wasn’t going to do anything. I was never going to tell you.”

“Nonetheless, I believe it best if I remove myself from your presence.”

Jim can still feel something rising in him—not sobs or shouts or hiccups even, but it shakes his body just as well.

“I will send a nurse to assist you in my stead. I am certain it will be better this way for the both of us.”

His chest heaves as he tries to draw in breath, heart pounding like a fist against bone. The thing rising inside him is no longer rising, like it's caught in his lungs, and now he can’t draw in breath.

And then Spock’s gone. Jim glances frantically around the room, but his friend is nowhere to be seen. It’s only Jim, fallen to his knees, and his ragged breaths and the love that will kill him.

The thing keeps coming, keeps writhing as it pulls its way up his throat, and Jim almost doesn’t notice the way the shadows are coalescing in the corner, the way the dark moves like dust and the shadow that has started to rise from it. And when he does, when he sees the shadow grow long and tall and twisted like branches, he somehow finds the breath for one, good

 _scream_.

The master bedroom is quiet, sheltered from the winds outside, and once again Spock finds that he almost misses the noise of San Francisco as he dims the light for meditation—the noisy thrumming of a city too great to notice him as he sits in his apartment with a candle burning low and a mind opened to scrutiny. Here in this house, the silence has its own thrumming, like something closing in.

He must focus. He glances once at Jim, his legs still visible through the half-open door, before slipping into meditation. Shallowly at first, waiting in the vestibule between awake and not-awake, and then deeper.

It is strange because he closes his eyes and finds himself back in the bedroom. The candles still flick with full wax and the wind is still a distant distraction.

“Spock?”

Jim’s voice—strange as well, because it is whispered and hoarse and very close—sounds through the room. Spock looks around but cannot see him; he glances toward the doorway but Jim’s legs are no longer visible. The door is open all the way now, and Spock feels unsettled as he rises. Perhaps he should have stayed in the living room.

His foot hits something hard and Spock narrowly avoids slamming into the glass partition that now runs through the room. It is nearly invisible in the low light, save for the candles’ reflection. Spock presses his hand against it and shuts his eyes against the memory of another hand pressing back.

A _thump_ and a _drag_ and Spock’s eyes fly open, but still there is no one there. He presses harder, wondering at the glass’ strength.

A _thump_ and a _drag_ and Spock can see something now, something small and broken pulling itself through the doorway.

A _thump_ and a _drag_ and—and it is Jim. 

Jim as he was in the radiation chamber. Jim as he appears in Spock’s dreams—bloody and choking on his breaths and undeniably in the process of dying.

 _Dead already_ , his brain had supplied even as Spock demanded entrance for the chamber, even as it took every piece of self-control not to rip it open. _His body destroyed and his katra lost behind a glass wall_ . _Nowhere else to go so it had tucked into itself, like something swallowed hole, like Vulcan that day in the black hole._

“Spock,” Jim says again. Except it’s not Jim, it can’t be. Jim’s alive and in the living room. He is laying on the couch finishing what remains of his chicken noodle soup, the one Spock had given him, the one that made Jim look up at him with wide, grateful eyes.

He is not in Spock’s room and he most certainly is not dying.

“I'm scared, Spock,” the facsimile says, dragging his body closer. Blood trails behind him and it is on his hand when he raises it to the glass. “Help me not be.”

Spock stumbles backwards, almost expecting the glass not to hold. And his fingers twitch because those are Jim’s eyes and he wants to touch him this time. He wants Jim to feel him before he dies, wants Jim to know.

“How do you choose not to feel?” the facsimile asks, breaths rattling out and eyes filling with tears.

Soon Jim will be gone, his katra tucked into the small hole called death, and he will never know that Spock loves him.

Spock raises his hand, just as he’s done a thousand times in a thousand dreams, but this time he’s pounding against the barrier, driving his fists over and over into the glass, his entire skeleton reverberating with the force. And, unlike in his dreams, there’s a crack. The tiniest fissure, barely visible to the eye, but Spock’s seen it, and he’s driving his entire body against the wall, watching as the crack grows larger.

“How do you choose not to feel?” Jim asks again, though it’s louder this time, his voice deeper.

Spock looks down and is surprised to see Jim watching him, his pupils grown huge like twin black holes, a smile twisting at his lips. 

“HOW” The voice is no longer Jim’s but rather a garbled approximation and Spock hesitates in his movements

”DO” Jim bangs his head against the glass and Spock staggers backwards

”YOU” another _bang_ and Spock can hear Jim’s nose break

”CHOOSE” _bang_ and his jaw dislocates

”NOT” _bang_ and his eye socket shatters

”TO” _bang_ and—

”FEEL?”

his skull cracks.

The scene is as Spock expects it to be: Blood and grey matter splattered on the glass. Jim’s body convulsing, his throat pushing out the words once more, a gurgle of blood and a whispered “Spock.” Fingers that claw at the glass, and the remains of his cranium hitting with a soft thud over and over again.

Spock sobs into his hands. He does not know how long he lays there curled into himself, only that he does not move until the thudding stops and the glass wall dissipates into nothing. The candles have waned and the light has changed, and the door is all the way open, though Jim’s legs cannot be seen. 

He staggers to his feet, and it is then that Spock hears the screaming.

It takes Spock two point three seconds to enter the living room, and when he does, it is to the sight of Jim on the floor and a figure bent over him. It takes another one point six seconds for Spock to realize that there is a flower coming out of Jim’s mouth and only zero point five to realize that the figure is very impossible indeed.

A too-long neck telescopes around the recliner, and it is a child’s face that peers at him, mouth opening to bare old teeth. It is bent over, legs long and with a chest full of flowers.

It takes Spock an infinitesimally small span of time to decide that they need to get out of here. _Now_.

The figure, when it moves, does so with a stutter. With a trip and a slip, like it does not belong to this realm. This, and only this, is what allows Spock to reach Jim before the creature does.

Spock grabs his captain, whose hands have risen to claw at the flower breaching his mouth and whose eyes are filled with tears, and he rushes toward the kitchen. He nearly stops when he sees another figure seated at the table, another Jim who has sprawled out in the red chair, smiling lopsidedly the way Jim often does, but with half his head missing. 

Spock runs all the faster, kicking the door open, and flying over the barren earth. Wind whips around him, and he closes his eyes against the blood-green clouds. He does not know what is real and what is not, only that they must get away from that house. The rental, he knows, is parked in the barn, and so he heads there and hopes that whatever psychic energy summoned those beings into the farmhouse cannot carry them outside.

The captain’s grip on his arm loosens and his eyes begin to roll back into his skull. Spock cradles him closer.

“Hold on, Jim,” he whispers. The barn door is only a few feet away now, blown open by the winds. “We are almost there.”

They enter the structure, sturdy but groaning against the winds nonetheless, and Spock lays his captain gently onto the floor. Jim’s hand reaches for Spock’s wrist as he tries to pull away and Spock permits it, interlacing their fingers as he assesses his friend’s condition.

The flower has prised his mouth open and only a whistling breath can escape, lifting the petals with each small gust. Blood trickles from his mouth and dirt has smeared across his face. He blinks up at Spock, eyes bright blue and the tears unending.

“Oh, Jim,” he whispers, raising his other hand to stroke Jim’s face. “I promise I will get it out.”

Jim nods, wincing as the plant writhes inside him. It blooms wider, shaking the blood from its petals, as if protesting Spock’s words.

The whistling breaths stop and his eyes widen, grip growing vice-like around Spock’s hand. Spock closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. He does not wish to inflict any more pain upon his friend.

Gently, he disentangles his hand from Jim’s fingers and reaches into his mouth. The flower has blossomed from something large, something like a vine, and it moves when Spock wraps his hand around it. Jim grunts in surprise, his eyes growing wide, and Spock runs his other hand across his forehead, a quick apology before he begins to pull.

If Jim could draw breath, he would be screaming, Spock’s sure. His back arches and his hands scramble at Spock’s arm, tears flowing anew. It does not take long for Spock to realize that this will not work; the vine keeps clinging tighter and Jim will asphyxiate before it releases him.

“Jim,” Spock whispers, releasing his hold on the flower, “the only other option I can see is to dislocate your jaw. It will permit me better leverage.”

Spock does not know how deep the vine reaches, and he can only hope that pulling the thing out will not cause fatal damage to his lungs and throat. Jim looks at him, eyes focused despite his wheezing breaths, and shakes his head.

“I am afraid it will be necessary,” Spock whispers, hands rising once again to caress his friend’s face. “I do not wish for it either.”

Jim grabs Spock’s hand as it passes over his temple and presses it to his meld points. Spock stills. Surprise passes through him; anxiety, too, and he suspects it leaks into his fingers, though Jim does not react.

“I can slow your autonomic responses as I did with the rose, but it will only be a stopgap,” he says, regret coloring your voice. “I still must find a way to remove it.”

Jim nods, the force of it jostling the plant and wringing a choking cough from him. That is all it takes to make Spock act, and it is a mere breath and tripping thought before he sinks in, before the salvo of thought and the wisp of disease entangled within.

And now Spock understands what Jim wanted, why he needed Spock to meld with him. Because the plant is still a part of him, still growing from his lungs, its roots too deep to remove without tearing him apart. The only option is to go deeper, to reach farther into Jim’s mind, because if Spock can run his hands along the borders of Jim’s psyche and slow his lungs and heart, maybe he can stop this thing from growing.

Maybe he can kill it. Maybe he can reach deep enough that he can wrap his mind around it and squeeze the life out.

Jim’s mind rushes to meet his and Spock can feel the link, the one he spent so many months attempting to banish, the one that tugged at him, that never truly weakened, roars into life.

When Jim comes back to himself, it’s to Spock leaning over him, the Vulcan’s hand still on his face, and something slipping from his throat. He gasps as air enters his lungs and gasps some more as his entire body protests. Everything hurts, everything right down to his teeth. Still, as Spock blinks down at him, a smile tugging at his lips, Jim can’t help but smile back.

“Welcome back, Jim,” Spock says. His eyes fall to the flower that’s fallen onto Jim’s chest, the red and blue one with something white surrounding its pistils, and frowns. “Is this a twil’la plant?”

“Are those _teeth_?” Jim asks, pointing at the white cuspids nestled between the petals as he struggles to sit up. “Bones never said anything about teeth!”

Spock looks up at him in surprise. “I—well, yes. Twil’la are carnivorous and a fully matured plant is capable of ensnaring and consuming insectoid life as well as small birds. My mother grew them in her garden, though they rarely reached a size such as this. She trimmed them as soon as the teeth began to form.”

“Fuck,” Jim says, wincing a little as his throat protests. “No wonder my teeth hurt. Must be a calcium deficiency. Ever hear that old wives’ tale about a mother losing a tooth for every baby she births?”

“I have not. Though I must admit that I am reluctant to compare a carnivorous plant that very nearly ended your life to a newborn child.”

Something thrums in Jim’s mind as he laughs, something warm that eases the pain in his bones even as his body keeps shaking, even as his laughter turns hysterical. Spock reaches for him, wrapping him in a tight embrace as the tears start again, and Jim hugs him back, hugs him tight as the cold and exhaustion creep in.

“How screwed do you think we’ll be if I take a nap?” Jim asks once the sobs begin to fade and only the rattling winds can be heard. “Do you think they’re looking for us?”

“I may have a theory regarding our visitors,” Spock says, pulling back to look at him. “Months ago I read about a theorized interdimensional civilization in the Medusan system. It is believed, based on a study led by the Betazoids, that the Medusans, if they are indeed real, possess immense telepathic abilities.”

“I remember that,” Jim says, frowning. “Bones brought me that issue in the hospital because they put my face on the cover. It was an interesting read, but there’s very little evidence to back it up. Most still believe that the Medusan system is uninhabited regardless of occasional anomalous readings.”

“Do you recall three point six years ago at the Academy when a group of students claimed to have witnessed a ship departing the Medusan system using a spectroscopic telescope?”

“Yeah,” Jim says, laughing. “The meteor party. I’m the one who calibrated their equipment beforehand. They drug me in front of a committee to help verify their readings.”

“Indeed. I was not part of the group that interrogated you, but I did assist with the evaluation of their results. They were never disproven, Jim. According to the readings taken that night, a ship departed under the cover of a meteor shower from the Medusan system. Based on the trajectory and last recorded speed, it was predicted that it would take the ship approximately three point five two years to reach its destination. And that destination was Earth.”

“And of course they chose a cornfield to land in. 

“The study conducted by the Betazoids revealed a residual psionic energy that was unique to the Medusan system.”

“Right,” Jim says, “that’s what led to the study in the first place. They experienced it like a telepathic ringing in the ears.”

“That is correct. It is not something that a Vulcan has ever experienced while in that section, but I took a tricorder reading while you were resting. The psionic reading in that house is identical to what the Betazoids recorded in the Medusan system.”

“So you’re saying I can’t take a nap right now?”

Spock sends him a reprimanding look. “This is quite serious, Jim.”

“I know,” Jim says, wincing as he leans back against the wall. Spock rises to help, and Jim doesn’t protest; his teeth have started hurting again, along with everything else. “So what do you suggest?”

The Vulcan hesitates, his eyes falling to the ground. “You have—when we—when we melded, did you feel something form in your mind?”

“Sure,” Jim responds, frowning a little at Spock’s stuttering. “It felt like something sliding into place. It’s like you’re still in my mind—then again, maybe that’s just the iron deficiency. Is that not normal?”

“It is not normal, no,” Spock says, still refusing to meet his eyes. “We have formed a bond, Jim. I would like to say that it was inevitable, that we were drawn together, and perhaps that would be true, but I cannot deny that my words would in part be motivated by a desire to expunge myself of guilt. I cannot ascribe what has formed between us to the stars anymore than I can ascribe the rotation of the moon to gravity. It would not rotate without the Earth and the link would not have formed were it not for my actions.”

“ _Spock_ ,” Jim says, because the barn has started to spin and his teeth ache in rhythm with his heartbeat. “That pretty little flower with teeth sticking out of it just sucked me dry. I have maybe two brain cells left and I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Please, I am attempting to explain,” Spock says, eyes finally rising to meet Jim’s. “I inadvertently formed a link between our minds seven point eight months ago. It was a grievous violation of your privacy, and I apologize profusely. I feared that, if allowed to mature, it could form a permanent bond, and I believe that is precisely what happened during the meld. That is why you can still feel me.”

Jim screws his eyes shut, attempting to make sense of the words as his mind trips over itself. “Wait,” he says, eyes opening in realization, “is that why you left? Because of the link?”

“Yes,” Spock says. “I realize now it was not the wisest course of action, but at the time I was ruled only by the fear that I would hurt you.”

A laugh escapes Jim’s lips before he can stop it, something bitter caught in his throat.

“You still hurt me, Spock.”

“I know. I fear that I will never be able to earn your forgiveness.”

“Of course you will,” Jim says, squeezing his friend’s hand. “It just won’t be right this moment.”

Spock’s lips tick upward, only falling when his eyes come to rest on the remains of the twil’la flower. Jim follows his gaze and shivers at the glint of the teeth, his body aching all the more at the sight. Something else aches too because surely Spock has figured out what the flower means by now. He is a genius, after all, and two plus two is always going to equal four.

“There is something else I must confess to you,” Spock says and Jim stills. His body’s spent and he doesn’t think it can summon the energy for another flower, but that doesn’t mean this won’t hurt just as much. “When I spoke just now of stars and things inevitable, I was not just speaking of the bond. My feelings for you, Jim—perhaps I should not ascribe them to destiny; perhaps I am once again avoiding personal responsibility. But there is no way I could live in this universe with you and not feel the way that I do.”

Jim’s head has started to pound and he sighs as he closes his eyes. “Could you speak a little plainer when you reject me, Spock? No need to dress it up.”

“I am not rejecting you, Jim,” the Vulcan says. He sounds surprised and Jim opens his eyes to study him. “I am attempting to tell you that I love you.”

Jim blinks. “No, you’re not.”

“I—I assure you that I am.”

“You can’t be,” he says, shaking his head and wincing a little when it pounds in protest. “I wouldn’t be coughing up your favorite flower if you were.”

“Jim, I am not familiar with the exact nature of your condition, but I assure you that I do in fact love you.”

“No, that doesn’t make sense,” Jim insists. “Wouldn’t I be able to feel it? You’re in my head and I can feel you there, but I can’t feel love.”

“I am shielding. I did not wish for you to be overwhelmed by the bond in your weakened state.”

“You’re trying to protect my feelings.”

“I admit that I would prefer not to hurt you, but I would not go so far as to lie about a t’hy’la bond and my undying love.”

“You can’t just say shit like ‘undying love,’ Spock!” Jim all but shouts. His head feels like it’s going to split open now, and the tears have started again. “You can’t just say you love me. You can’t just say that when it’s not true.”

“ _Jim_.” Spock speaks with such force that Jim quiets for a moment, looking up into the Vulcan’s eyes. They are wide and brown and there’s an entire world contained there as Spock reaches up to brush his tears away.

“The creatures in that house do not act out of malice. They do not feel hatred or anger and they most especially do not feel it toward us. I hazard to guess that they feel nothing at all and that they know even less. Perhaps the Medusans were once intelligent; perhaps they still would be if they were to be restored to their dimension. They built ships to take them to the stars, but they lost their minds somewhere along the way because, Jim, I _felt_ them. I could feel them in that house and I did not recognize them because their minds were as empty as the halls. I cannot even describe those creatures as evil, not when the only things they feel are cold and instinct and hunger.”

Jim tries to pull Spock’s hand away, but the Vulcan is steadfast.

“If such a thing exists as what I felt in that house, if this universe can play host to a creature that understands nothing but mimicry—how to pull out our worst thoughts and fears and bring them to life, how to destroy us by keeping us separate, by convincing us we are alone—if those things can exist and you can believe in them, then perhaps you can believe me when I tell you I love you.”

“Spock—”

“If you can look at something as ancient and strange as those creatures and know that they exist, then you can look at me when I speak of the t’hy’la bond, which is just as ancient and just as strange, and know that I do not deceive you.”

Jim’s eyes have closed, and he dares not open them as his lips tick upward and he whispers, “So what does that have to do with getting them out of my house?”

Amusement thrums across the bond, and Jim finally opens his eyes.

“Would you permit another meld?” the Vulcan asks, eyes bright in the low light. “Perhaps I can show you.”

Jim smiles.

“Anything, Spock.”

It starts with a tickle, of course, just as everything does these days. A tickle that, for once, is not in his throat, but at the back of his mind, like someone knocking at his skull’s door. 

This meld feels nothing like the one in the cave. It feels, if Jim’s honest, a little bit like falling. Not in a romantic sense because Jim’s been in enough free falls to know that, mostly, they just hurt. And he’s fallen in love enough times to know that it always hurts.

No, it feels more like dying. Like missing a step on the stairs and his foot landing with a creak as the entire house trembles in fear.

Like a slip and a trip and a   
  
  
  
  


fall.

And, if he’s honest (and he does always strive to be honest, contrary to what Bones says), it’s a little bit like being caught.

In the end, it doesn’t take much. The Medusans are powerful telepaths, but they’re no match against an ancient soulmate bond. 

And that’s what this thing inside his head is, Jim learns—the thing that hums like a wire and thrills like a lightning storm. It’s older than the stuff Jim’s made of, older than the Earth, and it vibrates at a frequency that turns silent amid the broad noises of the universe and clamorous when he looks at Spock.

Spock can direct it with a touch. He presses so hard against Jim’s face that he leaves bruises, just the barest trace of yellow, but Jim’s cranium sings like a harp. Carefully, Spock tucks away every bad thought that the Medusans have used to destroy them. Janus III, and the radiation chamber, and the Weeping Man.

When Jim reopens his eyes, the winds have grown silent and so has the pounding in his head. He smiles at Spock, a little hesitantly, a little like a grimace, but that’s OK because it doesn’t take long for it to turn into a kiss.

Bones, who has Joanna in tow and who wants to know why they haven’t been answering their comms for the last day, arrives not long after. Jim’s dozing in the haystack and Spock’s in the rented car trying to use the common system to alert Starfleet to a suspected extraterrestrial presence in a small farmhouse just down the road from the Riverside Shipyard. Yes, a security team is required. No, it’s probably best not to notify the press.

He takes one look at the withered flower and at Jim struggling to keep his eyes open and sighs.

“What happened and how badly do I need to kick Spock’s ass?”

“Hey, Bones,” Jim croaks, grinning as Joanna peers around his friend’s leg. “Hey, Jo.”

She gives him a scrutinizing look. “What happened to you?”

“Well,” Jim says, glancing at Spock as he emerges from the car, bangs disheveled and the slightest smile passing over his face as he spots the doctor, “do you remember that story I told you about the Weeping Man?”

Jim’s not surprised when he wakes up in the hospital a day later. Disappointed, sure, but not surprised. He feels like a used condom that’s been hung out to dry. Like cavities and decaying cells and trees turned brittle with fungus—he feels like a lot of things, really, and all of them bad.

So, even though the antiseptic makes him gag and the too white-sheets wrap around him like a shroud, there’s only so much complaining he can do. Bones pumps him full of some of his best drugs and, when Jim wakes from fevered nightmares, Spock is there, fingers on Jim’s brow and a smile playing on his lips.

Joanna’s the first to bring up the flower, and that’s only because she thinks barfing up alien plants is a neat trick. 

“Can I have the next one?” she asks, and Jim glances at Spock, anxiety wisping around the bond as he imagines his lungs filling with sunflowers.

“Sure,” he says, wincing a little as he pulls her onto his lap. “But for your dad’s sake, I’m hoping the next one won’t arrive any time soon.”

She gets a little sullen at that, crossing her arms and glaring at Spock as if it’s his fault. The Vulcan looks a little cowed, and Jim tells him to go find some ice cream in the cafeteria; Joanna warms right up to him once he comes back with a sundae.

He waits for Spock to bring up Winona again. Or maybe Bones; after all, they all know now that it’s possible for him to grow flowers even when the love is requited. Bones suggests that it was a combination of the cortisol and Spock being “ten miles deep in denial, a computer that gets a 404 page when he tries to process genuine emotion, and an idiot to boot.” Jim’s not sure what that means about Winona and Sam, if they could still harbor something like love for him, and he doesn’t want to find out. They know where he is if they ever want to find him and, mercifully, his friends are smart enough not to ask about it.

Bones releases him a few days later with strict instructions against “pining, mooning, and any other variations of being a lovesick idiot.” 

“No promises,” Jim laughs, and Spock wraps an extra jacket around him as they wave goodbye at the shuttle station.

San Francisco greets them like a cymbal, with a clash and a reverb, and Jim grins at the heads of passersby, bent in conversation as the city spirals up above them. They head straight for Spock’s apartment and Jim doesn’t argue, doesn’t even glance back toward his own suite with the empty shelves and bedroom like a maw. This city’s too big for living alone.

The first night is spent wrapped around each other, Jim crying softly into Spock’s shoulder. He left him, abandoned him when he needed him most, and Jim’s terrified that whatever they have can’t last and Spock will be gone in the morning. The Vulcan holds him tight and whispers apologies into Jim’s hair until he falls asleep.

They do the same the next night and the one after that because Jim keeps waking from nightmares screaming. The Weeping Man won’t leave him, even with the t’hy’la bond, and sometimes he thinks he can feel teeth gnawing at his lungs.

The dreams dissipate in the morning light, and he spends his days visiting the ship and checking in on the crew. Only two months and they’ll be in space again, stars whizzing by faster than he can count, earthly matters like flowers distant from his mind.

He tries going to the gym, but his body tires too easily. It only takes one round with the dumbbells before Jim, wiping tears of frustration from his eyes, calls Dr. Pham to schedule an appointment. He struggles to explain why exactly he hasn’t kept up with the exercises she assigned him, but she’s happy to see him nonetheless.

It’s after a particularly difficult session that he comes home one night, feet dragging and mood foul.

“Jim,” Spock greets, lips ticking upward as he reaches for Jim’s jacket. “Allow me to assist you.”

“I got it,” Jim grumbles, but Spock ignores him. Strong hands press against his skin as the jacket comes off and affection brushes against his mind. Jim turns with a smile, looping his arms around Spock’s neck.

“Thanks,” he says as he leans up for a kiss.

They stay like that for a moment, caught in the warm glow of the room, breathless with each other’s touch, before Spock draws away.

“I have prepared a special dinner for us,” he says. “It is intended to be romantic, but i will gladly accept your notes.”

“Romantic?” Jim laughs. “Have you been talking to Gaila?”

“No,” Spock says, leading Jim toward the table, “but I have been speaking with Nyota. We discussed traditional human courting methods, and I revealed that we did not ‘date’ before embarking on our romantic relationship. The information left her aghast.”

“Oh,” Jim says as he peers down at the spaghetti meal—homemade, if the pots on the stove are any indication—and the bottle of cabernet. “You know you don’t need to romance me, right?”

“She insisted that it is essential. I believe that Nyota found our own dating period to be inadequate, and she described in great detail every step she took to win over the affections of Lieutenant Vro.”

“Gaila was already crazy about her,” Jim says as he sits. “Nyota already had her affections, whether she wooed her or not. And you already have mine. Any wooing henceforth is unnecessary.”

“Be that as it may,” Spock says, pouring the wine, “I wished to make you happy.”

Jim grins up at him as they raise their glasses, the lights of the city glancing off the stems.

Dinner is good and the wine makes Jim hiccup, and soon he finds himself nodding off at the table. He thinks about moving to the couch, but decides it would be too much work, and so he sits and watches Spock instead.

“Jim,” the Vulcan says once he has finished clearing the table, “there is one more step in my attempt at wooing you.”

“A present?” Jim asks, and then laughs because that wine was actually quite good and Spock’s eyebrows just did a little dance across his forehead.

“It is indeed a present,” he says, face sobering. “I must, however, admit that I am unsure how you will receive it.”

“I’m sure it’s great, Spock. I’m not picky.”

“It is not—I do not wish for you to believe that I am unsatisfied with the current state of our relationship. Sexual relations are not requisite for me to be happy with you.”

“Oh,” Jim says, stilling. 

“I am aware that your libido has been diminished as you recover, but I have on multiple occasions noticed you become erect while we share a bed, and I can sense your arousal through the bond.”

“Oh no,” Jim groans, sliding deeper into his chair. “Spock, look, it’s not that I don’t want you. Trust me, I do. It’s just—it’s all the muscle mass I’ve lost. I feel like that skinny kid who couldn’t get a date to homecoming all over again.”

Spock nods. “I had surmised as much, which is why I bought you this.” he pulls a box out from under the table and slides it over to Jim.

Jim eyes it for a moment—it’s a little too flat to be a sex toy and he doesn’t think Spock would go to the trouble of wrapping up condoms—before tearing the wrapper off. The box is full of lace and silk and it takes Jim a moment to realize what it is he’s looking at.

“You—you bought me lingerie?” he asks, staring wide-eyed at Spock.

“Yes,” Spock says, obviously disquieted by Jim’s reaction as he shifts in his chair. “I was under the impression that it is meant to make the wearer feel more appealing. I—the clerk at the store informed me that it had allowed her to overcome insecurities regarding her physical appearance and made her ‘feel sexy.’”

Jim looks back down at the blue frills. It’s not all that unusual for men to wear lingerie, not anymore, but it’s still uncommon enough to have the taboo thrill of a kink. Jim himself has never tried it, never had the opportunity or the desire. But Spock’s watching him now, eyes wide with expectation, and worried that he’s done something wrong.

Reaching across the table to lay his hand on Spock’s, Jim grins and says, “Thank you, ashayam. I love it.”

Color rises to Spock’s cheeks and Jim’s not sure if it was the finger kiss or the endearment or maybe just the lingerie, but he’s grinning even wider now as he pulls the lace out of the box and holds it up.

“Should I try it on?” he asks, voice low as he plays with the bow.

Spock nods and then he’s picking Jim up and carrying him to the bedroom. Jim laughs and kisses him deeply before finally pulling away to grab the lace. It’s as he’s slipping the panties on, glancing into the bedroom mirror, that he notices the empty shelf above the bed.

He thinks, a little distantly as he turns and notices the city reflecting in the deep brown of Spock’s eyes, that maybe they should buy a house plant.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR READING!!!!! i don't know you, but i adore you.
> 
> warnings (don't worry, i promise this fic has a happy ending):
> 
> brief references to body image issues, as well as hoarding and starvation  
> fairly graphic violence in the master bedroom scene. if you want to skip this part, stop reading at "The master bedroom is quiet" and resume at "It takes Spock two point three seconds to enter the living room"  
> body horror. just, like, in general  
> please let me know if there's something else i should add!!!!!
> 
> feel free to come talk to me over at tumblr. i'm [@cowboyjimkirk](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/view/cowboyjimkirk)


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